Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2011 10:12:49 -0600 From: Chad Perrin <code@apotheon.net> To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ports deprecations (was: sysutils/cfs) Message-ID: <20110910161249.GA23457@guilt.hydra> In-Reply-To: <4E6B3AE1.80100@gmx.de> References: <201109052146.p85Lkous037023@fire.js.berklix.net> <CADLo838dMd5=TjRF5ffiaPH7o0%2BpeWgaqbQqEfDb3EP-n4ec8A@mail.gmail.com> <4E67935C.6080702@aldan.algebra.com> <CADLo838QkAjq2jPXy_c5MTYW09tZJMvWTNndo3Pnfa3=1c-5Og@mail.gmail.com> <4E68AC85.4060705@icritical.com> <4E68F34C.6090504@FreeBSD.org> <20110909040954.17733a4e@cox.net> <4E6A476D.7090800@gmx.de> <20110910004553.610dc809@cox.net> <4E6B3AE1.80100@gmx.de>
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--h31gzZEtNLTqOjlF Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 12:24:33PM +0200, Matthias Andree wrote: >=20 > The open question is, is there a point in marking a point DEPRECATED > without giving an expiration date. My personal answer is "no" because > no-one will believe in a DEPRECATED tag without EXPIRATION_DATE and > people will be disappointed because they've grown used to custom and > practice and I can already see the "we told you it was DEPRECATED". >=20 > The real point is that the FreeBSD ports system can not fill in for the > maintainers of discontinued ports. >=20 > There is a certain pragmatism to "as long as it builds, appears to work, > and there are no known critical bugs, let's keep it", but it has this > organizational drawback that it becomes custom and practice at some > time, and ends up hurting more people in the end. Maybe DEPRECATED is the wrong term for something that builds and works but has no maintainer, then. Maybe the term for it should be something like UNMAINTAINED or ABANDONED. That way, the message conveyed to the user is "This appears to work for now, and there are still using it, so we aren't going to make it exceedingly difficult to install on new deployments where people feel a need for it or want to maintain compatibility with other systems. There is no guarantee it will work in six months, though. Use at your own risk. If someone wants to start maintaining it, now is the time." I think part of the problem with the disagreements in this discussion is that everyone is focused on whether something builds, whether it has an obscure vulnerability that only affects particular use cases, and whether there is an upstream maintainer. Meanwhile, nobody seems to be discussing whether anyone uses it. I used a window manager in FreeBSD for about five years that had not upstream maintainer, because while the creator still maintained the codebase on his Website he no longer used it himself and never put any time into upkeep. Luckily, it was stable, had no known vulnerabilities, and did not appear to need any feature additions, either. It was my favorite window manager during that entire time and, though I've moved on early this year, the switch to a new window manager turns out to be a bit of a trade-off rather than a clear improvement -- but a trade-off that I think suits my current needs. No, I won't tell you which window manager, because if I want to use it again I don't want to discover that calling it to the minds of some of the ports people caused it to be deleted. Anyway, my point is that someone was *using* it, and quite liked it. If something is stable and secure and has an active maintainer, but nobody in the world uses it (or is likely to use it) other than that maintainer, it probably doesn't matter if it gets deleted from ports. If it has no upstream maintainer, but still builds, appears to be secure for pretty much every use case, and there are hundreds of users, deleting it is likely to make a lot of people unhappy. The problem with that, of course, is that it can be very difficult to measure actual users. I just don't think we should lose sight of the fact that should be regarded as one of the most important factors in determining whether a given port should exist. If enough people want it, a maintainer will probably appear eventually, even if it's not in the next few weeks, after all. --=20 Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] --h31gzZEtNLTqOjlF Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAk5rjIEACgkQ9mn/Pj01uKX0kQCg96rGZygF2dRCWFFVKxJh9ezp hg8AoKHdeBjFZoX3sshRiUdnBfjG6CSI =8gJS -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --h31gzZEtNLTqOjlF--
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