The removal was very much intentional.
osgEarth doesn't maintain its libraries properly, when their ABI breaks
the SONAME is not bumped for example. And these ABI breaks tend to
happen for every new osgEarth release.
This made the globe support in qgis problematic, as every new osgEarth
release required changes to QGIS. Hence we stopped supporting this
feature in Debian, reducing the need to have osgearth available in Debian.
osgEarth also tended to break with newer OpenSceneGraph releases, this
made maintaining the package not worth the effort for someone who
doesn't use it himself.
I see. Thank you for the explanation! Their fluctuating API (not even ABI...) has indeed caused some frustration for us and our users as well, so I understand your decision of stopping support for it.
> Is there a way for us to help osgearth come back into future (or maybe even
> the current) Debian and Ubuntu releases?
Work with upstream to handle library compatibility better for starters.
> Also: What do you think is the situation regarding the recently released
> osgEarth 3.0? Could it make it into Debian (and Ubuntu) in the foreseeable
> future? Even considering that it still requires GDAL 2.x, which might
> conflict with other packages?
I have not looked into osgEarth 3.0 and don't plan to do so. If this new
major release includes proper library management and backwards
compatibility, there may be a future for the package in Debian.
Without anyone working on maintaining the package in Debian there is no
chance of it being reintroduced in Debian and Ubuntu. If you want to use
the osgearth package available in Debian and Ubuntu for your work,
you'll need to step up and maintain the package.
We'll also have to see if it would be worth the required effort for us...