[kde-community] Discussion: KDE Manifesto, "established practices"

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Monday, November 11, 2013 12:16:38 Peter Grasch wrote:
> These people can not expected to know that deviating in case of special
> considerations is standard practice within the KDE community.

not at all. the key phrase is "established practices”. so, the established 
practice of, say, respecting string freezes. yes, there are exceptions to that 
rule, but those exceptions are codified *in the establishment of the practice 
of release engineering*.

if a given practice establishes *for itself* exceptions, then those exceptions 
are part of the “established practices”.

this moves the definition of “special considerations” from the manifesto, where 
all the acceptable exceptions can never be fully enumerated let alone be kept 
in sync with reality, TO the definitions of the practices themselves.

this is the same reason why the code of conduct is *referenced from* the 
manifesto rather than *included in* the manifesto.

> Removing that clause changes the meaning quite substantially in that case.

yes, because it means the commitments are not commitments. they are politely 
worded requests from KDE to the project and projects are free to invent 
special considerations to ignore these practices at will.

that is the opposite of what a commitment from the project is.

the current wording removes any true meaning from this part of the manifesto. 
it gives projects a wildcard to ignore any and all practices desired at any 
time because of “special considerations” which the project defines for itself.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo