Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
(Replying to the various comments in a single mail) On 29/07/09 at 12:15 +0100, Marco Rodrigues wrote:- move packages to experimentalI vote for this option. If a package doesn't have an active maintainer, it should belong to experimental suite and add some note at PTS explaning what to do in this case.Something that was not very clear in my mail is that the plan is to have all the options. For each orphaned package, we can either decide: - to remove it from debian - to move it to experimental, if it's still marginally useful
> - to keep it in unstable/testingExperimental is a development resource and not a dump for packages that should not be in unstable/testing. Abusing it sounds like a bad idea, so IMO think the current regime with a tad (but not overly) more aggressive removal once orphaned packages are more easily accessible seems like a good idea.
Personally, I think that old removing packages from Debian is a good idea. Everyone seems to be keen on removing cruft from her and his own computers, I don't really see that keeping cruft around in the archive is a necessarily beneficial when the it is already a huge problem to find the right package for a given job because the archive is as big as it is. Just like a newspaper chooses the stories it carries, it is Debian's task to offer a good *selection* of packages to its users. It would seem that even if they are not terminally broken, orphaned packages usually show more age, quirks, and lack of features compared to their currently maintained counterparts.
That said, I'm all for meritocracy, so maybe Barry and Chris should have the most say when they do the most QA uploads. (Hi Bas.)
Cheers T. -- Thomas Viehmann, http://thomas.viehmann.net/