On 9/19/19 10:44 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
Once upon a time, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler(a)chello.at> said:
> Randy Barlow wrote:
>> It is a disservice to our users to provide them with unmaintained
>> packages,
> It is a disservice to our users to NOT provide them with unmaintained
> packages. If, as a user, you NEED a package, you would rather have it
> present but unmaintained than not have it at all!
A distribution is not supposed to be just a big dump of software,
hopefully some of it working (like the early days of Linux where
everybody just uploaded their programs to a few big FTP sites); it's
supposed to be a system of things that are usable.
I was just going to write something like that, so thank you for saying
it first.
As a cautionary tale, please see
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1490074
It is an example of trying an existing but obsolete and unsupported
application that didn't work; trying to fix it, and realizing that it's
hopeless after wasting a day or so.
In cases like this, Fedora would be doing users a favor by yanking
it---not only people wouldn't waste time on broken stuff but hopefully
it would speed up the uptake of a better replacement.
This even applies to Python2, in a way. Just rip that bandaid off,
don't let it fester. RIP WUSTL FTP.