Move kppp away from kdenetwork

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Sunday, August 15, 2010, Eckhart Wörner wrote:
> I want to open another "slaughtering old stuff" thread, this time it's
> about kppp. :-)

<imho>
it's obvious kppp still has users, and likely a non-negligable absolute number 
of them. as a % of our total user base, it seems likely to be a pretty small 
global %. for some reagions, it will be a significant %.

kppp is not getting much "love" in the form of development, but that  seems to 
be because it basically works for most everyone who wants to use it. so in 
this case, active devel is not likely to be a useful parameter to decide.

so let's look at our downstreams for some guidance:

* we know it doesn't work on FreeBSD.

* it appears that OpenSuse doesn't install it by default. (at least, it isn't 
on my laptop, and i haven't removed packages...)

* doesn't look like Kubuntu doesn't install it by default

* it looks like Fedora's KDE Spin does install it by default

not sure about others, e.g. Mandriva.

so it appears that a number of our downstreams are opting out of it, some are 
accepting our suggestion that it belongs in the default network package. this 
suggests that there is perhaps some misalignment between our default 
networking package and typical KDE usage.

given that there are good #s of users, however, and that it has an active 
maintainer (Harri Porten) it shouldn't be moved to unmaintained status. 

a possibility is to move it to extragear. this would make sense if it really 
doesn't belong any more, given today's world, as part of the default essential 
set of apps for networking. (sort of like how kermit wouldn't really fit that 
definition any more.)

the cost of such a move is that new versions would need to be released by 
Harri (or whomever else joins him) and distros that do currently ship it by 
default would need to adjust their packaging.

finally, it doesn't seem that KPP is really _broken_ in any way, it's just not 
very modern.

given that there are users of it, that it doesn't get in the way if you don't 
use it, that is (at least nominally?) maintained (as in: someone claims to 
maintain it) and that kdenetwork isn't exactly overly large, i'd recommend 
keeping it where it is for now.

but as the network management stack in the form of kde network manager 
improves, as true dialup becomes less and less prevalent, and if KPP bitrots 
further so that it's relevant to fewer platforms it will likely make sense to 
move kppp at some point in the future. 

iow, all things considered, i think you're a couple / few years too early with 
this proposal. it should probably be earmarked for future examination against 
the points you presented, though.

again, all:
</imho>

this should also be passed by Urs Wolfer, who is the coordinator for that 
module according to:

http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Release_Team#Module_Coordinators

perhaps he will agree to putting some notes in the module about the state of 
the various apps for (re-)examination over time.

p.s.: thanks for keeping an eye on these things!

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks
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