Bug#688772: gnome Depends network-manager-gnome

[Bdale Garbee]

Josselin Mouette <joss at debian.org> writes:

>       * The reason for the historical Recommends instead of Depends is
>         not mentioned, while this history is used as an excuse for the
>         whole decision. 

I personally believe that metapackages should be primarily populated
with Recommends, with Depends largely reserved for actual technical
dependencies between real packages.  This is consistent with my belief
that we should try to empower our users to be able to exercise a
reasonable amount of choice in configuring and operating their Debian
systems.  Thus, my bias is to believe that when there's no strong
technical need, a Recommends is the appropriate choice, and any change
From a Recommends to Depends causes me to want to understand why the
change was made and what we hope to gain from it.

>       * The claim that NM can be replaced by another component without
>         functionality loss is preposterous. 

I won't argue this point, since I use NM myself on my notebook because
it is the best fit for my needs at the moment of the available choices.
The degree to which using NM "entangles me" in other GNOME-related bits
that are not otherwise particularly useful to me is annoying, but a
burden I'm willing to bear because I like what NM does for me.

>       * The excuse of the squeeze→wheezy upgrade serves as a basis for a
>         seemingly irrevocable decision that affects all future versions
>         of GNOME metapackages.

I would personally like *all* metapackage maintainers to re-evaluate the
need for Depends vs Recommends in all future versions... this is
certainly not something in which *I* am personally trying to single out
GNOME. 

>> We all want Debian to be a technically excellent distribution which
>> users want to use, and while we *often* have very different ideas on
>> what that actually means, we have come to those ideas by honest means.
>
> Ideally, yes. However I feel obliged to question the honesty of people
> spreading misinformation before using this misinformation to request
> CTTE decisions.

Regardless of what happens before, once an item is brought before the
CTTE, the only choice we all have is to try and make the discussion as
well-informed and balanced as possible, so that each CTTE member can
make the best possible decision given the information available.

We've already had some discussion about how much we should all as CTTE
members try to avoid bringing emotions into play.  It is clear that Ian
has struggled with that on this issue, but that's precisely the reason
that we have a diverse committee that uses a voting process to make
decisions...

Bdale
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