OF and packages (devs please read)

[JuanPi]

Hello all,

Since already quite a few years Carnë has been doing an excellent job
with Octave-Forge. Therefore his opinion has an important weight and
should be considered.

In a recent, not so friendly, discussion in our IRC channel, he
brought the point forward that, maybe, functions that are not popular
should be removed. This, plus the periodical move to core (also based
on some measure of popularity), would eventually make some packages
empty (take a look at pkg general at the moment).

Now, popularity is hard to measure, specially if we are not in the
field where the functions apply. Removing functions from packages
because some of us deem it useless might be uncomfortable for some
users (nothing that can't be solved with a copy of the function in a
local folder and an addpath to it), so I think it should be done with
care.

On the other hand, OF needs considerable time to maintain (and can
burn out important contributors), hence trying to reduce it size
sounds reasonable.

What measures of popularity would you suggest?
and
How you would go with removing packages?

-- 
JuanPi Carbajal
Public GnuPG key: 9C5B72BF
-----
The end of funding: "Many researchers were caught up in a web of
increasing exaggeration."
- Hans Moravec