[MPlayer-dev-eng] [POLICY] clarify conditions for functionality removal

[Diego Biurrun]

On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 03:27:24PM -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
> I try, when I can (and sometimes even in the privacy of my own head), to
> phrase things to as to avoid as much as possible the possibility of
> having their meaning changed even if intentionally taken out of context.
> Since the purpose of the explanation in the text file is to explain to
> someone who does *not* know the context what the rule is, I think it's
> worth going at least a little out of the way to be clear.

Point taken.

> My previous message, quoted above, provides my first suggestion for a
> clarification... I could of course come up with others, but (at least at
> first) they'd probably be rather clunkier.

Dominik just proposed a clarification, it's more or less equivalent to
what you suggested.  I believe it should work well enough.

> This is legalistic nitpicking, without question - but there are some
> reasons why legalese came to exist in the first place,

But I don't think having complex legalese serves us well in the first
place.  Ivan tried to come up with a long list of conditions and failed.
So IMO it's better to be a bit vague and leave room for interpretation
and consensus-building.  Furthermore having long lists of rules favors
obstructionism of the sort "No, you cannot do that, because it's against
paragraph 23, section 42, bullet point 3b!" and requires bureaucratic
overhead like changing the rules (with even more discussion) before
action can be taken.

Diego