Re: Decomissioning vaporware/obsolete/inactive GNU projects

[John Darrington]

We already have a procedure for decommissioning.  See

https://www.gnu.org/prep/gnumaint/howto-decommission.txt

And we already have a draft list of candidates for decommisionable projects:

gleem
thales
pyconfigure
pdf
gcide
gneuralnetwork
dionysus
edma
phantom_home

J'

On Wed, Apr 07, 2021 at 12:12:11PM +0200, Jose E. Marchesi wrote:
> 
> 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?
>