So I've been listening to the discussion about what should and shouldn't be in extra so far, and I've come to the following conclusions: 1) Niche is subjective. 2) Even if it weren't, whether a package is "niche" or "mainstream" is not a good criterion for classifying it in one repo or another. 3) Some good criteria for classifying packages in one repo or another are: a) Desire to maintain a package long-term. b) Association with a particular group of people you trust. 4) There are many who actually do trust developers more than TUs. This is not intended as a judgement, rather as an observation. My feeling is that we should have under the developer umbrella a split of the existing [extra] into two repos: [main] - to be in the main repo, a package must be voted in by a majority of the developers; we commit to maintaining these packages over a long period of time, and announce 6-12 months in advance if we're going to remove them (and again, this removal requires a majority vote); there should never be any orphans in here, and we should be extremely stingy about putting packages in here in the first place [extra] - developers can maintain any packages in here they wish; if they decide to orphan them, they must announce that to the developers and TUs and see if anyone wants to take them on; if nobody wants them, they get demoted and orphaned in unsupported so that the community can still benefit from the work they once did This is just a proposal intended as a starting point for discussion. But I think some notion of a supported group of [main] packages that we collectively commit to maintaining will make us feel less bad about a more in-flux [extra]. Also, a clear process about what you do when you orphan a package helps get those packages picked up by those with time or inclination to deal with them. For those who would say: why not just use [community] as the [extra] you're proposing above? The answer: so you can tell which group of individuals is standing behind these packages-- the developers. With that information, you can then decide for yourself who to trust. - P