[webkit-dev] It's time to remove the Haiku port

[Adam Barth]

On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 2:16 AM, Xan Lopez <xan at gnome.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Adam Barth <abarth at webkit.org> wrote:
>> As part of our effort to reduce complexity in WebKit, I believe it is
>> now time to remove the Haiku port.
>
> Perhaps it would make sense to have a small set of simple rules
> written down somewhere that would justify the WebKit developers in
> removing any given port from upstream. That way it would be a bit more
> impersonal and natural (like a tornado destroying your house) and less
> likely to be perceived as a personal attack.
>
> A number of months of inactivity sounds like the main thing to
> consider here, as you point out, so we could just make it official.

Yeah, I'm not sure where we should draw the line, but this case seems
pretty clearly in the "unmaintained" camp, as was the old Android
port.  Maybe a good rule of thumb is something like if the community
is spending more effort maintaining a port over a long period of time
than the nominal maintainers of that port, then it's a sign that the
port is creating negative value for the project.  (That's why I
included the statistics about the community contributing 70 patches to
WebKit/haiku and WebCore/platform/haiku over the past year and the
nominal maintainers contributing zero.)

In this case also, I feel like when we discussed this issue over a
year and a half ago, Stephan and Maxime said they were going to
actively maintain and improve the port, specifically over the summer
of 2010.  As far as I can tell, that never happened.  In that sense, I
feel like we've already given them the benefit of the doubt.

I hope no one takes this personally.  I certainly have no ill will
towards either Stephan or Maxime.  All my interactions with them in
the past have been positive.  It's just time for the project to move
on.

Adam