Re: [gentoo-dev] Last rites: app-text/cuneiform

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 9:24 AM, Peter Stuge <peter@stuge.se> wrote:
>
> I find the become-a-dev threshold significant so yes, something stops it..
>

So, my personal feeling is that /some/ packages get pulled a little
earlier than strictly necessary.  However, the fact is that when a
package gets treecleaned it is a symptom of a bigger problem.  Could
some packages stay in the tree an extra six months?  That's debatable.
 However, it doesn't really change the fact that in almost all of
these cases something is bound to break for good sooner or later if
things don't change.

In this particular case upstream is the main problem - it needs to
exist for starters (it looks like there is some interest in making
this move forward, but C++ expertise or not the maintainer needs to at
least start committing some of the known patches after testing them).

The only thing I've really done for cuneiform is buy it time.  I'll
give it best-effort and will genuinely try to fix bugs where able, but
it isn't like I get paid to use this package in my day job.  The mask
takes some of the edge off of the potential security concerns, but
sooner or later if upstream doesn't start moving forward they're going
to get stuck on some outdated version of some dependency and lead to
more serious QA violations.  If people really care about packages they
have to do something about it.  That's basically how FOSS works - you
get all this software for free, but it doesn't mean that it was
without cost to create it, and for the most part when things break you
get to keep the pieces.

If your goal is to have more packages in the tree then simply delaying
the inevitable won't really accomplish that.

Rich