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?
