package EOL

[Michael Schwendt]

On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 16:24:48 +0000 (UTC), Kevin Kofler wrote:

> I don't see how deleting the packages is helpful from a user point of view. 

1) A sane upgrade path for all users who have not installed the package
before: Don't offer packages for which there is no upgrade path.

2) Preventing that FE becomes a dumping ground for unmaintained packages,
where no package owner is reachable via email or bugzilla. 

Our users submit bug reports, the tickets are assigned to extras-orphan@,
and after X weeks somebody must close them as CANTFIX or WONTFIX and
inform the users that we offered something, which has no maintainer or
which is not available for the current releases of FC because it is broken
and orphaned.

> From what I've noticed when this was done at FC5 release time, it does give an 
> incentive for people who need the packages to maintain them, but it also 
> introduces holes in the availability of packages which aren't needed 
> (especially if you delete a package such as cgoban which had just been rebuilt 
> for FC5 and where the rebuilder offered to take up maintainance - there was 
> some lack of communication in that particular case, it has been taken up and 
> rebuilt again since, but it was unavailable for a few days for no good reason). 

So, you've found a single package which was rebuilt prior to updating
owners.list or the OrphanedPackages page in the Wiki? Rule of thumb for
next time: First take ownership in owners.list, then rebuild. Problem
solved. ;)