Re: Work-needing packages report for Sep 3, 2004
On Fri, Sep 03, 2004 at 10:52:45AM -0400, Norbert Veber wrote:
> Suggestion - I can't speak for others buy every time I get this
> email, I just simply search for the words "NEW", and look at only the
> new entries. What is the point of sending out a list of all packages
> over and over each week? The list is now over 1100 lines long! I
> would suggest only sending out the newly added ones, and adding a
> link to the web page where the rest can be found..
The intention was to annoy people so much that they would do something
about it. Either adopt the package, or examine the situation and
recommend stuff for removal. I even suggested generating this "junk"
list automatically but that faced opposition from people who (obviously
from my POV) think that removing packages from the distribution causes
more harm to users than having unmaintained junk in it.
There's lot of stuff in this list which has been there for over a year.
From my POV that indicates lack of interest and nothing else. If
among 1200+ people doing maintainer work _not one_ has enough interest
to adopt a package, that's got to mean something.
Scanning the list rather quickly:
bibview (#206137), orphaned 381 days ago
Description: X11 Bibliography database tool
I've used that program a few times, and it's buggy. It does weird
stuff. I have no interest in maintaing that. The alternatives:
pybliographer (junk, ate my data a couple of times); bibcursed
(horrible UI AFAICR -- and I'm not talking about shiny looks); gbib
(unmaintained upstream from what I can tell); bibtool (not great, but
this is what I have used to manage the bibliography used in my thesis,
among other things).
billard-gl (#236582), orphaned 179 days ago
Description: 3D billiards game
Foobilliard is much better. And I'm trying not to maintain games.
Hmm... debconf is a good example why I put the reverse depends on that
list. It's an eye-popper. "Whoa! Something's wrong here!" But
debconf's case is special.
guppi (#188498), orphaned 511 days ago
Description: GNOME graph and plot component, interface to gnumeric
Reverse Depends: libguppi-dev gnucash
I've actually asked myself what's going on here a couple of times. I
haven't paid much attention lately what got renamed to what and why,
but I was under the impression that Guppi was replaced by something
else. The question is why doesn't the GNUcash maintainer adopt guppi
if gnucash (still) needs this.
I do hope that the people who have requested help with packages
remember to close that request when they get some.
Marcelo
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