slightly related question: if I upload a new version to NEW, will the Age of the package be reset? I'm asking because my package has been in NEW for four months already and I'd like to avoid loosing that place by an upload of a new upstream version.
Apologies in advance if this is something that has been discussed a lot
in the past. I'd be very interested in being pointed in the right
direction in that case!
Every time I see stories like this, I wonder what the consequences of
the NEW queue's current workings are. This is *not* criticism of the
heroic work of the FTP Masters, nor is it criticism of the objectives
they have in processing the NEW queue. I do, however, worry that months
of waiting to see the fruits of one's labor might be detrimental to attracting new contributors, or indeed to motivate already active
ones. It also seems to be a not insigificant impediment to getting
useful work, such as a SONAME bump, done quickly. At least personally, I
find it harder to put in small pieces of work that result in incremental improvements if the result is having to wait months – with the added uncertainty of having to do it all again (for good reasons, but nevertheless).
It may well be that I'm asking the impossible here, but it does seem to
be a problem that other distributions don't suffer under to the same
extent. Is it merely a matter of their standards being lower, or is
there some room for improvement on our part?
I don't know if that has been proposed before, but how about waivingThis makes no sense as NEW is mostly about checking licenses.
the NEW queue requirement for experimental packages as a start?
[...] Since packages in experimental will never land in any
official release, I think dropping the NEW queue requirement has no
negative impact.
I guess this raises the (maybe already answered) question if the
additional license QA from NEW is for the end-product (i.e. Debian
stable) or for the servers that run the Debian infrastructure, which
of course includes experimental.
On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 02:52:56PM +0100, Stephan Lachnit wrote:
I don't know if that has been proposed before, but how about waivingThis makes no sense as NEW is mostly about checking licenses.
the NEW queue requirement for experimental packages as a start?
[...] Since packages in experimental will never land in any
official release, I think dropping the NEW queue requirement has no negative impact.
On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 02:52:56PM +0100, Stephan Lachnit wrote:
I don't know if that has been proposed before, but how about waivingThis makes no sense as NEW is mostly about checking licenses.
the NEW queue requirement for experimental packages as a start?
[...] Since packages in experimental will never land in any
official release, I think dropping the NEW queue requirement has no negative impact.
The existence of NEW means we currently don't, for completely newI don't know if that has been proposed before, but how about waivingThis makes no sense as NEW is mostly about checking licenses.
the NEW queue requirement for experimental packages as a start?
[...] Since packages in experimental will never land in any
official release, I think dropping the NEW queue requirement has no negative impact.
I think this is exactly why it makes sense. I think we can trust the
DDs to not make any large mistakes (e.g. putting steam in main).
Since packages in experimental aren't supposed to be used by anyone elseThe "damage" that's usually being discussed is Debian distributing
but the DDs themselves, the "damage" of a potentially missing / wrong
license is minimal, considering that DDs are aware of the fact that the packages aren't "official".
However I find that view a bit weird. Any update can change the licenseSure.
or add new files with different licenses, nothing is ever checked by the ftp-masters (that would be insanity).
On 11/18/21 4:08 PM, Stephan Lachnit wrote:
I guess this raises the (maybe already answered) question if the
additional license QA from NEW is for the end-product (i.e. Debian
stable) or for the servers that run the Debian infrastructure, which
of course includes experimental.
The latter.
On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 04:08:23PM +0100, Stephan Lachnit wrote:
I think this is exactly why it makes sense. I think we can trust theThe existence of NEW means we currently don't, for completely new
DDs to not make any large mistakes (e.g. putting steam in main).
packages.
On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 4:16 PM Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> wrote:
On 11/18/21 4:08 PM, Stephan Lachnit wrote:
I guess this raises the (maybe already answered) question if the
additional license QA from NEW is for the end-product (i.e. Debian
stable) or for the servers that run the Debian infrastructure, which
of course includes experimental.
The latter.
On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 4:29 PM Andrey Rahmatullin <wrar@debian.org> wrote:
On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 04:08:23PM +0100, Stephan Lachnit wrote:
I think this is exactly why it makes sense. I think we can trust theThe existence of NEW means we currently don't, for completely new
DDs to not make any large mistakes (e.g. putting steam in main).
packages.
I guess these two answers sum it up then. Thanks.
On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 02:52:56PM +0100, Stephan Lachnit wrote:
I don't know if that has been proposed before, but how about waiving
the NEW queue requirement for experimental packages as a start?
[...] Since packages in experimental will never land in any
official release, I think dropping the NEW queue requirement has no negative impact.
This makes no sense as NEW is mostly about checking licenses.
There is also the issue of cryptographic software, and the laws
regarding its export from the USA, which Debian deals with by treating
every package as though it _might_ at some point incorporate some
crypto, and therefore registering every package with BXA as part of the
NEW process.
Hi,
On 11/18/21 4:08 PM, Stephan Lachnit wrote:
I guess this raises the (maybe already answered) question if the
additional license QA from NEW is for the end-product (i.e. Debian
stable) or for the servers that run the Debian infrastructure, which
of course includes experimental.
The latter.
The license must allow Debian to redistribute the package. This is
checked very thoroughly on the initial upload, and updates are
expected to keep the same licensing. Whether that expectation still
holds with upstreams who prefer vendor copies over using external
packages is another matter, but in general these packages require more handholding anyway.
On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 04:08:23PM +0100, Stephan Lachnit wrote:
The existence of NEW means we currently don't, for completely newI don't know if that has been proposed before, but how about waivingThis makes no sense as NEW is mostly about checking licenses.
the NEW queue requirement for experimental packages as a start?
[...] Since packages in experimental will never land in any
official release, I think dropping the NEW queue requirement has no
negative impact.
I think this is exactly why it makes sense. I think we can trust the
DDs to not make any large mistakes (e.g. putting steam in main).
packages.
Since packages in experimental aren't supposed to be used by anyone elseThe "damage" that's usually being discussed is Debian distributing
but the DDs themselves, the "damage" of a potentially missing / wrong
license is minimal, considering that DDs are aware of the fact that the
packages aren't "official".
something we can't, not users e.g. getting non-free software thinking it's free. Packages in NEW aren't even publicly accessible because of this,
and discussions of switching to git-based source packages end with "we
can't publish git history of random repos as we don't want to review
and rewrite it".
However I find that view a bit weird. Any update can change the licenseSure.
or add new files with different licenses, nothing is ever checked by the
ftp-masters (that would be insanity).
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