arches and etch

[Camm Maguire <camm@enhanced.com>]

Greetings, and thank you all so much for your usual fantastic work on
Debian! 

I just wanted to make a few observations about the recent decision to
scrap m68k from etch:

1) The 4.x C compiler and hppa and apparently arm are currently much
   worse. 
2) kernel and/or libc bugs preventing any profiling program from
   invoking 'system' persist on mips(el) and hppa
3) alpha apparently has a kernel or other bug that corrupts
   denormalized numbers when passed as function arguments.
4) For a significant amount of time after the security compromise, we
   still have no standard ssh access to Debian alpha and arm machines
   for the purposes of fixing bugs.  I've had to rely on
   friends/accounts on other machines to fill in here.
5) Code which I had which compiled on all 11 sarge arches was
   summarily thrown out of testing apparently due to its failure to
   compile under new buggy gcc on some of these machines.  If we are
   looking for a fair standard, I would suggest that an arch would
   have at least to compile what it did in the previous release to be
   a candidate for the next, and that until it does, it should not
   cause the ejection of code which had not changed from the prior
   release. 
6) the m68k people have always been incredibly helpful and responsive,
   while it is quite difficult to get replies concerning several of
   the other arches, at least for me.  
7) Perhaps we should consider the balance between making debian just
   another glitzy quick-release plaything for mass consumption and
   minimal user contribution, and a system designed to give users who
   care and contribute the flexibility and power to do their work which
   so greatly benefits us all.

These are just my thoughts.  I've been a Debian developer for over ten
years, but recognize that I don't have as much information on these
issues as others in the project.  I will of course continue to support
whatever course the Debian organizational structure feels is best in
this regard.

Take care,
-- 
Camm Maguire			     			camm@enhanced.com
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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."  --  Baha'u'llah