Re: Do we still need libc5?

Debian unstable & testing still carry around libc5, and some associated
packages like altgcc, libdb1, ld.so and a few others.

Is there nowadays still a use for these packages? Does the amount of
usage warrant the efforts it take to maintain these rather outdated
packages?

How hard can it be to keep these packages around?

I already proposed to remove the whole libc5 chaintools and
dependencies before woody release. A few users complained because of a
few old commercial programs (such as wordperfect and so)

(Apologies if attribution got messed up here.)

Uh, you bet. Commercial or not, WordPerfect 8 for Unix remains the best word processor available on our platform. OO.org is as bloated as the software it emulates. I would be incredibly pissed if I could not continue to run WP8. But, that said, all I need is that it not be _broken_, so that those legacy libraries remain available and functional.

I have a page at http://ul451.gsu.edu/~pwiseman/WP8_and_Debian_GNU_Linux.html which has some of the necessary packages to make it work. If there will be others taken out of future Debian distributions, I'd appreciate being told, so that I can make them available to troglodytes like myself who continue to use WP8. Whatever its weaknesses, it's still WordPerfect, the best word processor ever, whatever your platform.

Patrick