XFCE packages gone?

[Tet]

Konstantin Ryabitsev writes:

>> Why did the XFCE packages disappear from rawhide?
>
>Read the last 512 messages sent to the list. Sheesh. :)

You have a point. But at the same time, there are still unanswered
questions. Who made the final decision about which packages were to
go? Bill Nottingham? Elliot? Someone else? What was the rationale
for their selection -- space saving, obviously, but why package A
rather than package B? Although I personally disagree with some
of the choices[1], I don't see anything going that is critical
to be in Core (although see below). But it would be nice to know
who made the decisions, and the reasons they made them.

Something that needs to be addressed formally at some point, though,
is the line between Core and Extras and where it's drawn.

The stated objective is for Core to provide "a complete general-purpose
operating system". There is no equivalent statement of intent regarding
Extras. It would seem logical to have the objectives be something like:

Core:
  A general purpose OS with the functionality required by the majority
  of end users.
Core + Extras:
  A complete general purpose OS, with extra functionality used by niche
  groups, and alternate packages that provide similar functionality to
  the defaults in Core.

Thus a package could be measured against those objectives to help decide
whether it belonged in Core or Extras. It's probably too late to do this
for FC4, but it should be seriously considered for FC5.

Tet

[1] The list includes 4 apps (gnumeric, abiword, gv and aumix) that
    I use on a fairly regular basis. Personally, I think OO.o should
    have been removed, but I realise I'm in the minority there...