Core-Dev Application: Till Kamppeter

[Soren Hansen]

This is probably going to be somewhat controversial, but that's the way
it goes sometimes.  I've had a bit of time to ponder this and it's been
weighing on me.

In a civilised community, I consider laws and rules to be guidelines.
The traffic laws tell me to not walk across the street when there's a
red light.  Nevertheless, you won't find me waiting for a green light if
there's not a car in sight.  I'm not afraid to admit that openly, and I
won't be expecting a knock on my door from the local police because of
it.
 
The electricity company says I'm not to fiddle with the fuse box in my
house. However, they happen to be not quite legal right now, so I'll be
fixing that at some point. After that, I'll have an authorised
electrician over to check that I've done a good job, just to be sure.

The heat utility company says that I'm not to fiddle around with the
heat pipes coming into the house. Nevertheless, some of them are rusty
and if I don't replace them, they'll spring a leak real soon. After the
fact, I'll tell them to come and replace the seal on it. I don't expect
they'll give me a hard time for that.  (prior "art" agrees with me)

If I didn't know what I was doing and I ended up breaking either the
heat pipes or the electrical installations in the process, then I'd
expect nothing less than to have them telling me I broke their rules and
regulations and that I had to pay a fine or whatever, but if it all went
fine, I'd be surprised if they'd bother giving me any trouble about it.

I used to have a company along with a few other guys. We had a very
detailed contract. Among lots and lots of other things, it defined how
to dissolve the company. In the end, we just divided the stuff somewhat
evenly between us, and closed down. It didn't matter what the contract
said, because everyone was happy and on good terms. Had we not been,
we'd had fallen back to the letter of the contract.

IMO, the purpose of rules and regulations is to have something to point
at if an actual problem arises. Until there's an actual problem, I like
to assume that the people I'm dealing with have good intentions, and I
won't hit them over the head with rule books and all that.

In a perfect world, all of our rules could be replaced with "Make sure
Ubuntu stays one of the greatest operating systems out there". However,
in the not-quite perfect world we find ourselves in, it's useful to have
slightly more verbose rules and laws, as this makes settling arguments
less arbitrary. That doesn't mean that we should be watching everyone
else and see if they're breaking the letter of the law. 

Example: We don't allow binary uploads to the archive.  However, to
bootstrap certain things (e.g. ghc6), it might be much, much easier if
your initial upload contained an already-compiled ghc to bootstrap
itself and then removed that binary from any subsequent uploads. I see
no problem in that.

I think it's reasonable to have a rule that says that we're not supposed
to upload half-broken things to the archive, because in the case where
someone does so without any intention of fixing it, I like to have
something to point at when I'm telling them off. If, however, someone
does so for benign reasons, and fixes it shortly after, I think you've
got way too much time on your hands if you're decide to pursue that to
any (un-)reasonable extent.

As usual, I'm speaking for myself, not Canonical, not the MC, etc, etc.
Just me.

-- 
Soren Hansen               | 
Virtualisation specialist  | Ubuntu Server Team
Canonical Ltd.             | http://www.ubuntu.com/
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