First and foremost I am for fixing the stable version as soon as possible (by fixing I mean remove the offending warnings). The maximum priority here, in my view, it is to ensure that the people who depends on Debian stable can get rid of these rude and disruptive warnings (which will scare and confuse many), and that should be done in a regular update that can be applied via a conservative apt-get update. Then I am for fixing all branches as well.
Then I believe we should NOT remove this package, just rename it in the next version of Debian. Why throw away this good code? It serves people well! The author desire is clearly out-of-touch, as he ignores that stable branches are deliberately kept with older versions in name of better stability - his position is untenable, and his behavior is less than polite (to put it mildly). He released the code under a free, open source license, so heck yeah we can change it. For the record however, I want to thank the author for his good work on this package - it is not easy to do what he did. I also understand his concerns, but quite frankly, I believe this issue is one that he has to deal with himself - maybe just have an specific email address for bugs, with a canned automated response which could say something like this: "Hello, thank you for reporting this problem and thus helping to improve xscreensaver. I review all emails, but please keep in mind this: Many Linux distributions ship older versions of this software; maybe the issue that you are reporting is already fixed in a new release. Please check the following link www.link.com to see the changelog (things that were fixed already in previous versions), and if you see your problem there, then you should know that you must get a updated version from this software. PLEASE NOTE THAT I AM UNABLE TO ANSWER EMAILS RELATED TO BUGS THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN FIXED. If the bug is new, I will get back to you. Cheers." Problem solved! I hope that the author is reading this and will reconsider his position. I for one appreciate his work and I would prefer that he continues to be part of and contribute to Debian. My 2 cents. Jamil
