Re: Why lastrite when it works? (Was: Re: [gentoo-dev] Packages up for grabs due to retirement)

[Damien LEVAC <damien.levac@gmail.com>]

On 01/03/2017 09:14 AM, Michael Mol wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 3, 2017 12:05:10 PM EST Michał Górny wrote:
>> On Tue, 3 Jan 2017 16:00:52 +0700 (+07)
>>
>> grozin@gentoo.org wrote:
>>> On Mon, 2 Jan 2017, Brian Evans wrote:
>>>> IMO, this one should be given last-rites as upstream is dead and it
>>>> heavily depends on wireless-tools and WEXT.
>>> I use it on 2 notebooks. It works fine, and is (from my point of view) the
>>> most convenient tool to control ethernet and wifi connections on a
>>> notebook. Why lastrite it when it works?
>> This is the Gentoo Way™. Having a working software is not a goal.
>> Gentoo focuses on the best bleeding edge experience and therefore
>> highly relies on software packages that are under active development
>> and require active maintenance. The packages in early stages of
>> development are especially interesting since they can supply users
>> and developers with variety of interesting bugs and unpredictable
>> issues.
> Do we have detailed treatise documenting the points and counterpoints to "Why
> lastrite it when it works?" It's a question that comes up every month or two,
> and the reasons, for and against, are probably mature enough to get numbers,
> now.
>
> Reason #3 in favor: "It works for me" may only be valid from a particular
> perspective. Without active maintenance, there may be subtle bugs that aren't
> immediately obvious. Bugs that aren't immediately obvious aren't always
> innocuous; sometimes they're insidious background data loss. Other times, they
> might be security vulnerabilities no good guy has yet noticed.
...and sometimes a package just stop being "actively" maintained because 
it is feature-complete (as far as the goals of the project were 
concerned) and just works.

The minimum conditions to lastrite something should be not actively 
maintained _and_ with open bugs that either compromise security or 
affect normal usage subject to the condition that it is not still used 
by users. I do not think at this point in time Gentoo devs have any mean 
to know the popularity of different packages, but that would be a must 
to take proper decision as far as retiring packages goes.

-- Just a random Gentoo user.