On 08/12/2008, at 20.55, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
. Should we keep obsolete, deprecated, abandoned software forever?
No, certainly not forever. Nobody has suggested keeping GTK+ 1.2 forever.
Hmmm... Sounds like an argument for porting Debian to the C64.
It's great if you can present your own arguments, and I'd like to understand what your position is. Please stop exaggerating and ridiculing my POV. It's a dumb rhetorical trick that populist politicians use ad infinitum but it does not belong in this community.
One of the purposes of Debian and the FOSS community is to make it possible to develop and distribute software that is authored and supported by volunteers. We have a responsibility of supporting software components that are still being used by people. There are people other than Debian Developers using the distribution, they might not be using the latest versions of the toolkits, but that is their choice. As long as there is interest in the FOSS community for a specific component, it should be maintained in Debian.
I am not saying that all rdepends of GTK+ 1.2 should be kept in the distribution. My position is that it is too early to retire the library GTK+ 1.2. I have offered to maintain it.
If you want to change my opinion on this, you have to present valid arguments and not ridicule and/or exaggerations.
Cheers, Morten