Re: The fate of libc5

[raj@colsa.com (Raj Manandhar)]

libc5 is unfortunately used by a significant minority of commercial
packages. For example, at various times the libc6 netscape was
unusable but libc5 was OK (it's what I'm running now; haven't checked
back to see if the libc6 version runs better).

To help users, one shouldn't focus on supporting the last 3 (or
whatever number) of Debian distributions, but rather focus on
supporting the last 2 major library revs. If libraries disappear (or
are unsupported), then that prevents one from running applications,
which could be commercial, or just old locally developed things that
one doesn't want to trouble with recompiling or upgrading. Supporting
a few library revs also makes Debian that much less of a moving target
as a platform for vendors -- as one poster pointed out, they would
then feel less obliged to supply static binaries.