Removing stale packages

[Laurent Blume]

Le 2014/10/13 14:42 +0200, Matchek a écrit:
> Yes, I see what you mean. What we would want to signal to people is
> that there is nobody taking care of this package and there will not be
> anybody caring about this package, unless they do it. Package not being
> in the catalog does send that message (I hope).

I'm afraid the message is too direct: «go away, nothing for you here». 
Considering the requests, few people look long for a solution.

> Which approach works better, should be possible to determine
> empirically, but I don't have a good idea how. Maybe looking at the
> past. Around 2010/2011 we had an influx of new people taken on the
> project, followed by most of them not releasing any packages ever.
> We've done some package cleanups, and there wasn't much reaction
> either. I got contacted once about "why was this package removed?",
> and it did not result in a new maintainer joining the project, so I
> only have depressing examples for both approaches.

Look, there are no two ways around the facts: Solaris is a dying platform.
S10 has less than 4 years left. Anecdotal evidence shows that it is used 
more and more as a kind of sadistic punishment to people with no 
sufficient skill to administer it properly, let alone build stuff on it. 
S11 is becoming an appliance, and anyway, at this point, its unsupported 
FOSS is still good enough (yes, it will be completely rotten in a few 
years, just like for S10, but that will take time to sink in: many 
people actually believe Oracle supports all that stuff, poor souls).

It won't get better, and sooner or later, we'll all have to find other 
hobbies. Unless maybe we get to the COBOL situation where some companies 
are forced to pay insane amounts to train people to keep using legacy 
systems. But I doubt it, it's not that irreplaceable.

Laurent