New port with maintainer ports@FreeBSD.org [was: Question about maintainers]

[Mark Linimon]

On Fri, Jul 29, 2005 at 02:27:08AM +0200, Danny Pansters wrote:
> (1) We have too many ports as it is. [...]

> (2) There are quite a lot of ports that are not up to what we should consider 
> QA standards. Most but not all of them comprise unmaintained ports. (personal 
> idea: nuke approximately half of them)

I can speak to this issue with some authority, since I designed the
DEPRECATED/EXPIRATION_DATE system and have put a lot of work into it.

Each time we have scheduled another batch of ports for deletion -- just
the ones that don't install/deinstall/fetch/make describe -- it's created
controversy.  People are really unhappy to see ports that they used get
slated for removal.

The good part is that somewhere between 50%-70% of the ports that are
so flagged _actually get fixed_ by this process.

So if the process of removing ports that are "broken" by an easily
gauged technical standard is controversial, just think how controversial
it'll be to pull hundreds or thousands of ports that _pass_ this technical
standard.  Past experience suggests to me that the flamewar that would
erupt from this would burn for months.  I, personally, would spend no
effort on such a thing.

Keep in my that _your_ useless port is someone's else's favorite.  Who
decides?  This would never reach consensus.

> (3) So there appear to have been some very capable people who perhaps 
> partially got their commit bits to ports by bringing in lots of, ultimately 
> unmaintained, ports.

I really doubt that anyone has done this solely to gain a commit bit --
I think this is more a result of the model of "commit things that might
be useful to someone, somewhere, at some point."  I'd rather impute the
best possible motives to people's actions here.

mcl