On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 3:09 PM, Matt Turner <matts...@gentoo.org> wrote: > > For what it's worth, Jack Morgan was recently getting his sparc and > ia64 systems back up, but then decided to retire instead when he saw > all of the discussions about dropping the architectures he cares > about. >
Honestly, I don't really get this sort of thing. The reason arches get dropped is because they mark things stable that they can't keep up with. If an arch never marked a package as stable nobody would be bothered. If they only marked a few critical packages as stable and then kept up with them, again nobody would be bothered. The conflict comes in when an arch team marks packages as stable, but then doesn't keep up with them. Marking a package as stable is a two-way commitment. When an arch team marks a package as stable they make a promise to the maintainer to stabilize updates in a timely manner. In return the maintainer promises to keep older versions around to suit the needs of the arch team for the short time it takes to do these stabilizations. When an arch team stabilizes something that they don't have time to maintain then they're making a promise they can't keep, and the deal breaks down. Eventually the maintainers complain, and the council ends up revoking the right of the arch team to hold the maintainers to their side of the deal which has already been broken. There are no bad guys here. There is just a certain amount of work it takes to make a stable arch viable, and it either happens or it doesn't. Most people who use Gentoo are tinkerers by nature. All things being equal we'd love to see every arch supported. However, this requires discipline on the part of the arch team, because otherwise an arch that few people use starts impacting work for other arches that many more use as maintainers get buried in old bugs. -- Rich
