Re: Fixed release dates are hurting quality
Andrey Rahmatullin <wrar@debian.org> writes:
> Strictly speaking, there is a big logical error here.
> If a package doesn't have RC bugs that doesn't mean it's fit for a
> stable release, doesn't have serious issues, or even is usable.
Yes, but if no one has reported any serious issues, I think we should
assume that it's usable.
Think of it in terms of a risk trade-off: If we toss orphaned packages or
packages with inactive maintainers, the upside is that we are less likely
to ship broken packages that have a low enough usage that no one has
reported the brokenness, and the downside is that we may remove packages
that someone is still using and cares about and that work fine for them.
If we keep those packages, the upside is that if they are working they
continue to work. The downside is that they may be silently broken... but
in that case if no one is using them to know that they're broken, all
they're wasting is disk space and possibly an unpleasant surprise in the
rare case that someone stumbles across them.
To me, the rewards of keeping the orphaned packages clearly outweigh the
risks. If the package is actually broken, presumably sooner or later
someone will notice and report that as a bug, and we can then take
appropriate action.
The exception, I suppose, is that we probably shouldn't keep shipping
packages that are orphaned and that no one is using, just on clutter
grounds, but that seems like a smaller problem that would be
better-handled by other mechanisms than a blanket rule for unmaintained
packages.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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