homes for the homeless.

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 25 Apr 2006 15:22:25 +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:

> > Should sodipodi be included in Extras again considering it's not being
> > actively developed?  Seems sorta pointless since it's successor Inkscape
> > is already included in FE.
> 
> Not actively developed packages are accepted in extras. Even packages
> without clear upstream or no upstream (this happens a lot for old packages 
> that are fortunately often also very stable).

So, is this true for Sodipodi? That's the question.

> Of course it is harder to attract maintainers when the package isn't
> actively developed and there is a successor, but my understanding is that
> it is not an issue. Having old packages that depend on old lib version 
> shouldn't be a reason not to update the libs, however. So if there is 
> trouble with the dependencies, then the maintainer will certainly have to 
> package some compat packages so it may even become so annoying that the 
> package is dropped, but it is not a requirements. 

Some projects are abandoned because the developers haved reached a point
where they believe they are done. And they seem to work satisfactory for
several months or even years. However, there's always the risk that an
unmaintained piece of software will need maintenance in a form which
requires upstream development, particularly when it is a GUI application.
It could be anything ranging from non-trivial C/C++ standards compliance
updates, ordinary bugs, to updates required by changes in APIs. Think twice
before you encourage our users to start using a program where this might
happen.