Decomissioning vaporware/obsolete/inactive GNU projects

[Jose E. Marchesi]

Hi people.

I think we have way too many obsolete/inactive/vaporware programs in
GNU, and that doesn't help to improve the external perception of the GNU
project.

It is also distracting and makes it difficult to get a clear overall
picture of the project.

The maintainers coordinators look for these things from time to time,
sporadically, for particular cases.  But I suggest to go thru the
complete list of GNU programs and make a list of these that we probably
want to decomission/archive.

A first pass would identify candidates for decommission/removal, using
this criteria:

- Projects older than a year, but without any source code.
- Projects with code, but that have not been updated in 10 years.
- ... other criteria?

Then the maintainers for such marked projects would be contacted.  If
they don't reply in, say, a couple of months, the project is marked to
be decomissioned/archived.

A second pass will then actually decomission/archive the projects.

Decomissioning/archiving a program would involve to:

1) Backup VCS, web VCS, mailing lists and download areas.
2) Remove the savannah group.
3) Remove (comment-out) the program from `maintainers'.
4) Remove the program's website from www.gnu.org
5) ... more?

Opinions?