Michael Stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > No, what is unsubstantiated is your characterization of what is > happening. One of things that happens *every time* this sort of > discussion comes up is that someone starts creating straw men along > the lines of "what if some important package gets removed because of > some arbitrary criteria; it would be horrible, so we should complain a > lot about the criteria and then do nothing".
Yes. Deleting information is a big step. We *should* be extremely conservative about deleting information. If we make a mistake and fail to delete a package that should have been deleted, it entails little cost, and we can rectify the mistake at any time very easily, even years later. By contrast, if a package is deleted that shouldn't be deleted, it costs a lot of work to reverse, and becomes harder and harder to reverse the more time has gone by. I was myself bit by this, when the gnome maintainers decided that gnome-1 was obsolete, and started deleting things, despite there being packages (such as gnucash) which depended on the libraries in question. > And yet, a list of > packages was generated and comments about the list were solicitied. If > the arbitrary criteria were used to silently and automatically remove > packages then the "every package is sacred" crowd would have a leg to > stand on with that line of reasoning--as it is, it's silly. Um, I didn't object to that. All I did was say, "let's be sure to give individualized attention." The process did not, in fact, say that there would be such. All it said was that "if there is no reason to keep them" that packages meeting a criterion would be dropped. This suggests no more process to me than posting a list and seeing if anybody squeaks, rather than the actual individualized examination that is called for. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]