On Wed, Jul 1, 2026, at 7:30 PM, Otto Kekäläinen wrote: > Hi, > > On Wed, 1 Jul 2026 at 19:27, Julian Andres Klode <[email protected]> wrote: > ... >> Whether Debian wants to switch or not is not my decision. Debian >> has a procedure for making changes, which is the maintainer doing >> whatever the fuck they want and if anyone disagrees escalating to >> the CTTE if necessary. The maintainer chose to delegate that decision > ... > > I don't know how the author expected the above to be interpreted, but > I certainly do not agree that maintainers have the freedom to do > whatever they want. > > When we mentor new prospective Debian Developers we certainly put a > lot of effort into helping them learn how to communicate, coordinate > and use their judgement to best serve fellow developers and prioritize > Debian's users' needs to the level that is known or can be assumed. If > a person otherwise on track to become a DD does things that show a > lack of consideration of others, or that they are doing "whatever they > want" regardless of the overall benefit and Debian's long-term health, > we would certainly not advance their application. I think existing DDs > should be held to the same standards as aspiring DDs.
I think what Julian meant to say is that we do not have a technical board, steering committee, BDFL or other body that makes such central decisions. We give a lot of leeway to individual DDs/maintainers, and have conflict resolution mechanisms (that sometimes work better, and sometimes don't). This is not true for other distros (including Ubuntu), where there are people that can make (and have made, in this particular case) such a decision. For big/disruptive changes (which switching the default coreutils implementation would definitely be ;)), getting input before doing it is definitely expected, and not doing so would likely quickly escalate to a point of such a change becoming effectively blocked from entering testing and a resolution being forced. There is practically zero risk for such a change to go through unless the majority of (interested) DDs favor it.
