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+===== TITLE
+
+Debian Menu System
+
+===== WEB SUMMARY
+
+The technical committee adopts the changes to policy regarding menu
+entries proposed by Charles Plessy, and additionally resolves that
+packages providing desktop files shall not also provide a menu file.
+
+===== EMAIL INTRO
+
+The technical committee was asked in #741573 to decide an issue of
+Debian technical policy regarding menu regarding the menu system.
+
+===== EMAIL EPILOGUE
+
+The technical committee would like to thank everyone who participated
+in the discussion of #741573 and the patience of the Policy Editors as
+the technical committee worked through this issue very slowly.
+
+===== DECISION
+
+Whereas:
+
+   1. The Debian Policy Manual states (§9.6) that 'The Debian menu
+      package provides a standard interface between packages providing
+      applications and "menu programs"'. It further states that 'All
+      packages that provide applications that need not be passed any
+      special command line arguments for normal operations should
+      register a menu entry for those applications'.
+
+   2. All details about menu system requirement are delegated to the
+      Debian Menu sub-policy and Debian Menu System manuals (the
+      "Debian menu system").
+
+   3. An external specification, the Freedesktop Desktop Entry
+      Specification (the ".desktop spec"), with native support in many
+      X desktop environments, has appeared since the Debian Menu
+      system was developed. The .desktop spec offers a fairly strict
+      super-set of Debian Menu system functionality.
+
+   4. The .desktop specification has significant technical benefits
+      for users over the Debian menu system. The .desktop
+      specification works together with the freedesktop.org mime type
+      and icon specifications to provide operations expected by
+      desktop users from other environments, such as Mac OS X or
+      Windows. As such, applications must provide a .desktop file to
+      operate well in most desktop environments.
+
+   5. The Debian Technical Committee has been asked to resolve a
+      dispute between maintainers of Debian Policy over a change that
+
+      i. incorporates the description of the FreeDesktop menu system
+         and its use in Debian for listing program in desktop menus
+         and associating them with media types
+
+     ii. softens the wording on the Debian Menu system to reflect that
+         in Jessie it will be neither displayed nor installed by
+         default on standard Debian installations.
+
+ Therefore:
+
+   The Technical Committee has reviewed the underlying technical
+   issues around this question and has resolved that Debian will be
+   best served by migrating away from our own Debian Menu System and
+   towards the common Freedesktop Desktop Entry Specification, and
+   that menu information for applications should not be duplicated in
+   two different formats.
+
+   To encourage this change, we make menu files optional, ask that
+   packages include .desktop files as appropriate and prohibit
+   packages from providing both menu and .desktop files for the same
+   application.
+
+Using its power under §6.1.1 to decide on any matter of technical
+policy, and its power under §6.1.5 to offer advice:
+
+   1. The Technical Committee adopts the changes proposed by Charles
+      Plessy in ba679bff[1].
+
+   2. In addition to those changes, the Technical Committee resolves
+      that packages providing a .desktop file shall not also provide a
+      menu file for the same application.
+
+   3. We further resolve that "menu programs" should not depend on the
+      Debian Menu System and should instead rely on .desktop file
+      contents for constructing a list of applications to present to
+      the user.
+
+   4. We advise the maintainers of the 'menu' package to update that
+      package to reflect this increased focus on .desktop files by
+      modifying the 'menu' package to use .desktop files for the
+      source of menu information in addition to menu files.
+
+   5. Discussion of the precise relationship between menu file
+      section/hints values and .desktop file Categories values may be
+      defined within the Debian Menu sub-policy and Debian Menu
+      System.
+
+   6. Further modifications to the menu policy are allowed using the
+      normal policy modification process.
+
+[1]: http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/dbnpolicy/policy.git/commit/?id=ba679bff76f5b9152f43d5bc901b9b3aad257479