Am 12.03.21 um 14:39 schrieb Lukáš Kucharczyk via arch-general:
I think making the terminology clearer is a benefit to English speakers at all levels of language mastery.
Calling the things what they are, that is unmaintained package and unneeded package, is an overall improvement to clarity, and also sidesteps the confusion stemming from one word meaning something different in different but adjacent contexts.
In the local case, "unneeded" may be too strong. It is possible a package has been installed as a dependency and later you started to use its commands directly. If you remove the package depending on it now, it is not unnecessary. I think orphaned covers that case well, the final action may be removal if the package is truly unneeded or a promotion to explicitly installed status.