Hi,
since I aint got blag i will polute our lovely mailing list (sorry if i hit 
some in-middle flame :P).

Currently i've been reviewing the package.mask file (since we have to keep with 
it for a while [no package.mask folder near us :)] we have to trim it down and 
keep sane).

NOTE: The p.mask as folder situation was agreed upon so dont reply about THAT 
but focus on what follows below this point in your replies.

While i was reading it there are 5 major use cases for stuff in it.

- Masking beta/rc/alpha/development_branch stuff
- Masking live ebuild
- Masking stable releases for testing
- Masks for removal (those are quite moving in and out ;])
- Masks for security issues (mostly games)

So lets go one by one and rationalize on wether we need it or not.

* Masking beta...
This masks are good if the software release is KNOWN to break previous 
behaviour or degrade user experience. Otherwise the software should not be 
masked (its TESTING for purpose, not stable).
Also the maintainer should watch if the testing branch is still relevant (why 
on earth we have masked 4.0.3_p20070403 version of screen when newer 4.3 is 
stable ;]) and remove the branch+mask when needed.

* Masking live...
Heck no. This is not proper usage. Just use keywords mask. KEYWORDS="". 
Problem solved and the package.mask is smaller. (Note, in overlays do what 
ever you want, since it does not polute the main mask from g-x86).

* Masking stable releases...
Here i found most interesting stuff around (for example mask for testing from 
2006, yeah not ~ material after 3 years?! :P)
There should be policy defined that you can add the new release under p.mask if 
you see it fit, but the mask can stay only for 6 months (less/more, 
suggestions?) and then it must be unmasked, or have really high activity on 
tracker bug and good reasoning (mask for ruby-1.9 and so on).

* Masks for removal...
Nothing to say here, they are done quite well right now, and treecleaners kill 
them when they got time :]

* Masks for security...
These are the only one masks that are permanent (probably none will fix the 
nethack,...). They should be maybe even kept on the bottom of the package.mask 
file all together and separated with some comment, so they are always easy to 
spot from first look on that file.

Any more ideas/suggestions to the above?

Cheers

--------
Tomáš Chvátal
Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Overlays/QA/Sunrise/X11]
E-Mail          : scarabeus@g.o
GnuPG FP        : 94A4 5CCD 85D3 DE24 FE99 F924 1C1E 9CDE 0341 4587
GnuPG ID        : 03414587