I realize I'm going a bit far afield here from the original question.

FreeBSD announced that they would yank gnome1.  I find this premature,
and were I still running FreeBSD (I stopped a week or so before the
announcement, coincidently), I'd have been bothered and motivated to
convert that last box over to NetBSD a bit faster.

But there are really multiple separate issues:

1) gtk 1.2 support (obviously this should stay for a long time)
2) gnome 1.4 libs support (needed to run gnome1 programs under gnome2)
3) gnome 1.4 core/panel/applets (needed to run gnome 1.4)
4) particular programs that have both a gtk12/gtk2 or gnome1/gnome2 versions

Right now, it seems that gtk-2 is stable, gnome2.2 is fairly stable
itself, but pkgsrc for it is fairly recent (not saying it doesn't work
- just that it is new).  We aren't yet at the point that someone running
running gnome1.4 can dismissed as loony or on their own (like we would
if someone asked for help with NetBSD 1.2) - or at least I think so
since I'm still running it.

So, I think gnome libs need to stay until all programs which use them
have either been replaced/surpassed by their gnome2 versions, or have
been abandoned by their maintainers, or the balance of grief rises due
to security problems found in gnome1 that don't get fixed.  I bet this
is at least summer 2004, if not later.

gnome-core-1.4 (incl panel etc.) might go sooner, but until it becomes
grief to maintain, I think it should stay.  If the gnome folks are not
releasing new versions, there should be little to no maintenance
issues.

For individual programs, I'd ask
* does the gtk1 (or gnome1) version "work"?
* is the gtk2 (or gnome2) version "better"?
* Is there grief to maintain (or leave in place) the gtk1 pkgsrc
  entry?
* Are we at the point where we can simply mock people for not being
  able to run gtk2 (or still running gnome1)?

With gtk based programs, things are simpler, since you don't have to
choose which you run.  So withdrawing a gtk1 version of program X in
favor of the gtk2 version is a far more reasonable thing to do.  I'd
only be in favor of that if there were some grief involved in leaving
the bits in pkgsrc, or if the maintainers are actively telling people
not to run it.  gaim may well be in this category.

With gnome programs, I think we should be much more hesitant to
actively desupport them.  I don't mean to ask anyone to do maintenance
work - I'm talking about 'cvs rm' of packages that seem to work.

Sorry if I have rambled too much - one of the things I like about
NetBSD is the lack of an attitude that says "new is better, even if it
isn't really, or if it isn't 100% baked yet".

-- 
        Greg Troxel <gdt@ir.bbn.com>