Re: [gentoo-dev] Graphics Project disbanded [pkgs up for grabs]

[Rich Freeman]

On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 7:22 PM Philip Webb <purslow@××××××××.net> wrote:
>
> 200607 Pacho Ramos wrote:
> > I think this is the list of completely unmaintained packages now,
> > indeed most of them, around 100.
>
> -- extract from list --
>
> > media-gfx/imagemagick : 200516
> > media-libs/giflib : 200312
> > media-libs/libjpeg-turbo : 200328
> > media-libs/openjpeg : 200328
> > virtual/jpeg : 200606
>
> There have been upgrades of all these in recent months :
> dates when I upgraded on my desktop system are added (the last yesterday).
> Surely, that means someone is maintaining them.
> Perhaps the culprits could own up (smile).
>
> As a long-time user, I find it disturbing
> that a huge list of packages should suddenly be declared unmaintained,
> esp as some of them -- eg above -- are likely needed by most users.

They were not maintained by identified developers before - that is the
point.  The only thing that is changing is that metadata is being
updated to reflect reality.  Now these packages will get more notice
and developers can set up and maintain them as needed.

The packages aren't being removed - just the project.

If any of the packages assigned to the graphics projects already had
individual maintainers then those would still remain after the project
is removed.

Put it this way - suppose we created a project called "dummy" with no
developers in it, and we assigned that project to all the packages
that are maintaner-needed.  Would that actually change anything?  XML
tags in metadata files don't maintain packages - people do.

This sort of thing has happened many times in the past.  Sometimes it
does result in packages getting treecleaned, but mainly when they have
other serious issues.  Popular packages aren't likely to get removed
this way - certainly not something like libjpeg or imagemagick and so
on.

-- 
Rich