Re: [bug-gsrc] paxutils tar out of date

[Karl Berry]

    I think ideally, a minimal goal should be to keep everything at least
    building properly

"Ideally".  Right.  This is not an ideal world.

    But I can imagine that maintainers lose interest in even doing
    that minimal effort sometimes, or life situations change, etc. 

Right, but at least in those cases we can eventually declare the package
unmaintained and look for someone.

I've found that the bigger problem is when maintainers continue to do a
"little bit" of work, probably always believing they'll have more time
for the package "soon", but no release ever actually gets made.  And
since they are still replying to us and still (theoretically anyway)
working on it, there's no realistic action to take.

And, the fact is, many GNU packages do not have widespread interest or
user base.  So when the original author disappears, there's no one
around who wants to take it on.

    it's probably inevitable sometimes that packages end up in a state of
    developmental torpor.

Right.

    That list is approximately:

And I think all the ones you list fall into the above category.

    Well, let's wait until my fabled patches start arriving 

Ack :).

    until this damn PhD is finished...

Good luck with that.  Impressed you've done as much as you have, with a
phd looming!

k