Proposed udpates policy change

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 8 Mar 2010 21:59:29 +0000, Matthew wrote:

> This is the policy that I expect to be discussed during the Fesco 
> meeting tomorrow. This is entirely orthogonal to the ongoing discussions 
> regarding whether updates in stable releases should be expected to 
> provide features or purely bugfixes, and I don't see any conflict in 
> introducing it before those discussions have concluded.
> 
> Introduction
> ------------
> 
> We assume the following axioms:
> 
> 1) Updates to stable that result in any reduction of functionality to 
> the user are unacceptable.

Unless the fixes contained within an update are _more important_ than a
dropped feature.

E.g. if upstream has removed some "functionality" deliberately, and
upgrading to upstream's code is the only way to move forward.

> 2) It is impossible to ensure that functionality will not be reduced 
> without sufficient testing.
> 
> 3) Sufficient testing of software inherently requires manual 
> intervention by more than one individual.
> 
> Proposal
> --------
> 
> The ability for maintainers to flag an update directly into the updates 
> repository will be disabled. Before being added to updates, the package 
> must receive a net karma of +3 in Bodhi.

-1 silly
-1 ridiculuous
-1 bad
===
-3 total

I would be very unhappy with FESCo (and I was one who voted during the
election), if something like that were approved.

> It should be noted that this does not require that packages pass through 
> updates-testing. The package will appear in Bodhi as soon as the update 
> is available. If sufficient karma is added before a push occurs, and the 
> update is flagged for automatic pushing when the karma threshold is 
> reached, the update will be pushed directly to updates.
> 
> It is the expectation of Fesco that the majority of updates should 
> easily be able to garner the necessary karma in a minimal space of time. 

Your wording or FESCo's? In either case, I disapprove this strongly.
I have failed to get bodhi karma from bug reporters multiple times 
before. It is beyond my time to pester bug reporters, so they would
vote inside bodhi instead of simply adding a comment in bugzilla.
In many cases (ABRT generated tickets), I cannot even get them to reply
in bugzilla. I release updates in return to
 - problem reports found in non-Fedora places,
 - crap I see in daily diffs I create for upstream projects,
 - problems I find myself, which haven't reported by anyone else but
   likely affect other users.
I don't want such updates to be held up by artificial hurdles.