On 4/30/2015 5:10 PM, Neil Bowers wrote:
I think we should either remove very old dists from CPAN, or update
them to follow modern conventions (so they have a META.yml or
META.json, for example). I had email with the author of CGI::Response
(last released in 1995) for example, and he agreed that it should be
removed from CPAN.
I had a look at all the dists that were last released in 1995 and
wrote up my thoughts on them:
http://neilb.org/2015/04/30/curating-old-releases.html
Where people think dists shouldn’t be removed, I’m happy to try adopt
them to release minimal updates, where I’m able to.
I’m interested to hear what others think.
Neil
This brought back some frustrated memories. I tried to take over
Math::Brent, for the purpose of upgrading the package and fixing an
error. I managed to locate John Williams, who was fine with it -- but
who then couldn't grant me co-maintenance because PAUSE didn't have him
as the owner (I checked, and all of his modules at that time were
co-owned by another user, although only one had been worked on).
At that point he didn't feel like proceeding further, and I didn't feel
like making an issue of it, especially if the other user was going to
make the fixes anyway.
It's now two years later. The other user doesn't seem to have ownership
anymore, but Math::Brent is still has an outstanding bug.
I'm still interested in being a co-maintainer. For that matter, I'd be
interested in co-maintaining Math::Fortran and Math::Derivative,
although I would probably retire the Math::Fortran name for something
like Math::Util.
-john
