A proposal for code removal prior to FreeBSD 13

[Warner Losh]

On Sun, Dec 16, 2018 at 8:27 AM George Neville-Neil <gnn at neville-neil.com>
wrote:

> Howdy,
>
> A few of us are working on a list of programs and other code that we'd
> like to remove before FreeBSD 13.  If others with to collaborate on this
> removal, or discuss it, please do so here.
>
> The list is being maintained on the project WIki:
> https://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsGoing/FreeBSD13


I'm in the process of writing some of the criteria I've been using to drive
discussions. I've promised a formal policy for a long time, but that's
turning out to be harder than I thought to write and have just documented
the criteria I look at to do the cost / benefit analysis for things. It's
skewed a bit towards old drivers and old architectures (or platforms within
those architectures), but it's likely a useful snowman to work towards
something better. https://wiki.freebsd.org/ObsoleteCriteria

This doesn't get into the process at all of who to have the conversation
with, what steps you go through to ensure that there's a transition plan
for current users (if there's enough to warrant it), etc. It's just a set
of things I've found useful to think about and that I think the project
should adopt (with refinement) as a standard template to use when making
these calls.

I also hope that there's sufficient public discussion of the proposed
removals individually. While you can't always get 100% agreement, you still
need to have the discussions to make sure that you aren't blind to data
that would stay your hand on deletion (or maybe even hasten it).

Warner