Re: Proposed ports deprecation and removal policy

On 2/28/24 11:22, Florian Smeets wrote:
> Ports can be removed immediately if one of the following conditions is 
> met:
>
> - Upstream distfile is no longer available from the original 
> source/mirror (Our and other distcaches e.g. Debian, Gentoo, etc do 
> not count as "available")


Such removal can't be immediate and unconditional.


Software can be perfectly useful and used by many users, but

(1) Some government compelled the upstream developer to remove it for 
political reasons, for example to suppress users' privacy. This actually 
happened with one port this year when Chinese government forced its 
removal. We need to help such software to remain available when many 
users exist.

(2) The upstream forgot to renew the domain, so it became temporarily 
unavailable.


The situation of apparently disappeared tarballs should be considered on 
a case-by-case basis, not in a blanket fashion.



Thanks,

Yuri