Debian policy codifies how and what needs to be in place before a package can be uploaded for review to Debian ftp-masters for inclusion in Debian-archive.
Debian policy is actually standardizes many things -
- How the Filesystem is laid out (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard - FHS)
- How Debian Menu should look, what components it should display
- Machine readable debian/copyright specification - This makes it easier to automate and have bit of metadata about copyright of a package.
- Authoritative list of Virtual Package Names - These package names are needed especially when migrating from version to another
and many more things.
