Re: Semantic: update or remove?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Psionic K <psionik@positron.solutions>
> Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2025 15:29:50 +0900
> Cc: Psionic K <psionik@positron.solutions>, dancol@dancol.org, 
> emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > > If a package can't find a maintainer and
> > > survive on its own, it is simply not strong enough in the competitive 
> > > landscape to continue earning its
> > > maintenance.
> 
> > That would mean to drop the ball on 75% of what we have in Emacs.  So
> > this suggestion is not useful.
> 
> That the consequence is severe does not argue against the logic.

It does in my book.  If it doesn't in yours, you have some strange
method of making decisions in these matters.

Just look at how many packages in Emacs have their maintainer set to
emacs-devel.

> It's not necessary to finish a marathon with one step.  The process of trial 
> and error involves...  error.  No
> error means there is no trial and therefore no progress.  Maybe kill a good 
> 3% and see how it goes. 

It makes absolutely no sense to make even a small step in a direction
that is clearly a mistake.  Problems don't solve themselves "on the
way", not in the real world.

> If it doesn't serve as a useful piece of technical consensus and is not 
> capable of attracting a maintainer, 

You have just conflated two separate and very different reasons for a
package to have no maintainer.  They should be considered separately.
Packages should only be removed if they are no longer useful, not
because no one steps forward to take over.  When a package is useful,
but has no active maintainer, the Emacs maintainers step in to solve
whatever issues are reported with it.

> serves only as a landmark that leads us into a bygone era and pulls oxygen 
> away from things that might
> thrive without such a distraction in place.
> 
> We are at best always piloting a lagging indicator towards an uncertain 
> attractor that no software has ever
> arrived at.  The question is do we lag the centroid of sustainable 
> development by months, years, or
> decades?

These issues are not for you to decide, with all due respect.  Not
until you volunteer to become an active member of the Emacs
maintenance team, and share the burden.  The authority to make such
decisions and even seriously suggest them to be made comes with the
responsibility for the present and the future of Emacs, including all
of its packages and its users.

So your opinion is noted, but please drop the general argument,
because it cannot convince anyone who is actually working on Emacs.
Let's instead discuss the specific issues raised by Daniel, which are
related to this single package, not to Emacs packages in general.