Policy on introducing new packages for discontinued projects?

[Patrice Dumas]

On Fri, Jan 11, 2008 at 05:12:02PM -0500, Deepak Bhole wrote:
> Hi There,
> 
> I'm working on updating maven2 in Fedora, and one of the dependencies
> that it is cascading into is Jakarta Slide. This project hasn't had
> updates for a while, and is now officially dead as stated on the main
> page:
> 
> http://jakarta.apache.org/slide/index.html
> 
> What is Fedora policy for introducing new packages for defunct projects?
> Specially when those packages provide optional functionality...

It depends on the reason why it is defunct. If it is because it works
since a long time, such that nobody needs to take care of it, then it is
a very good thing. If it is a package abandoned although it is not very
stable, then if a packager wants to keep it in fedora he'll have to be
prepared to be more or less the upstream.

So this is left to the packager, but in the precise case you bring up, 
I'd suggest retiring the package 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/RetiredPackages
especially since there is a replacement. And indeed stop using that
functionality. If not, then be prepared to do the patching yourself.

--
Pat