lenny+1 and the future of the alpha port?

[Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org>]

Hi folks,

With lenny just around the corner, I think it's time to start thinking about
the future of the Debian alpha port for lenny+1 and beyond.

I've noticed some time before, early in the lenny cycle, that the alpha port
is no longer useful to me personally.  It's still been fun to hack on from
time to time, but my alpha is so far underpowered compared to all the other
machines I have on-line that it's no longer useful to me.

It's also by far the loudest machine in the house and dissipates the most
heat.

So I'm committed to following through on the alpha port through the release
of lenny, but once lenny is out I intend to discontinue my work on it; my
alpha is only powered on in order to do daily builds of the installer, and
I'm looking forward to powering it off.

Are there other developers still actively using alpha who are willing to do
the work to maintain it?  Or perhaps a more important question:  does anyone
foresee themselves still using alpha three years from now (1.5 years of
lenny as stable, + 1 year of security support as oldstable)?

If not, I think it's time to look at retiring the alpha port gracefully as a
release architecture.  Alpha has had a long, proud run in Debian, but if
alpha/lenny+1 isn't actually going to be useful to anyone, and no one is
really maintaining it (we've been mostly coasting for lenny already on the
porting front), it would be better to drop the port now rather than continue
to take up project resources and become a source of resentment.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com                                     vorlon@debian.org