Bug#707851: Soften the the wording recommending menu files: let's do it in Jessie.

[Charles Plessy]

Le Tue, Jan 07, 2014 at 11:09:55PM -0300, Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer a écrit :
> On Wednesday 08 January 2014 08:33:31 Charles Plessy wrote:
> > No comment from the GNOME and KDE teams ?  What do you think of the
> > corrections that I proposed below, and of the patch in general ?
> 
> Not to be taken as "KDE team" reply, but here's my opinion.
> 
> On Sunday 05 January 2014 14:53:12 Charles Plessy wrote:
> > First of all, about the core of Sune's request to “soften the the wording
> > recommending menu files”, in the current policy, it is already a should.  To
> > make this one softer would be to turn it completely optional at the
> > maintainer's discretion, which does not make sense for a menu that aims at
> > being comprehensive.
> 
> That's right. So in my opinion we should simply kill the Debian menu system 
> and let other environments implement the FreeDesktop one. The Debian menu 
> system did serve it's purpose, now there is a much wider standard, so let's 
> avoid wasting our time patching the holes on those who did not yet implemented 
> it.
> 

Hi Lisandro,

thanks for your answer.  Input from all the parties is critical.

in my point of view, the Policy has been used to bully the maintainers of
FreeDesktop-compliant applications and desktop environments, and the patch that
I propose, which calls the Debian Menu "superseded" in these situations, should
stop that problem.

On the other hand, it is the spirit of Debian to accept low-maintenance patches
(in that case, menu entries) when it can help other projects even if one does
not care for it.  In that sense, if the Debian Menu has an active user base, it
would be counter-productive to kill it with a top-down decision.  Note that if
generalised, top-down termination of people's projects can make Debian very,
very small.

Regardless of what you think of the Debian Menu, what do you think about my
patch ?

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan