Re: Ballot option: Debian is created by humans

Gard Spreemann dijo [Wed, Aug 12, 2026 at 10:17:35AM +0200]:
>> Claude is not a DD, it therefore cannot contribute directly to Debian. When I
>> say "Claude, create a Debian package doing foo and set myself as a Maintainer",
>> is that a direct contribution?
>
>Assuming that the software itself already exists upstream and that you
>are talking about its Debian packaging: Yes, this is in fact the
>archetype of the kind of contribution I had in mind.
>
>Assuming that you start from scratch and write the software itself using
>Claude, while doing the Debian packaging part as a human: This is indeed
>a loophole – the software itself is now an indirect contribution by
>virtue of being upstream. I would find it strange to attempt to forbid a
>DD from writing non-Debian software in whatever way they want. And
>strange to forbid *just* DD-written upstream software from entering
>Debian. So the loophole must remain. I do think people understand that
>exploiting this loophole would go against the spirit, if not the letter,
>of the GR if this option were adopted.

What do you think about other software-written packaging? i.e. about
packages created by our usual dh-make-* tools? I have used them quite
a bit. Of course, I do take a look (and fill in with more data where
needed). I have even written one dh-make-*¹ tool several years ago; I
didn't use it much for Debian work IIRC, but had quite a large
deployment of debianized Drupal modules at a private apt repo.

¹ https://manpages.debian.org/testing/dh-make-drupal/dh-make-drupal.1.en.html

Yes, it would be excessive to label dh-make-* as “rule-based expert
systems”, but to an extent... yes, it's a software-based shortcut that
saved me a lot of time filling in very repeatable packaging patterns.