[Catalog-sig] disallowing the removal of packages?

[P.J. Eby]

At 02:45 PM 7/5/2011 -0400, Jim Fulton wrote:
>On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:53 PM, Martijn Faassen 
><faassen at startifact.com> wrote:
>...
> > I now think a special mirror might be the simplest way to solve this,
> > since mirroring infrastructure already exist.
>
>Of course, it would have to be *special*, in that it would mirror
>additions and updates, but not removal.
>
>Also, ironically, this hurts developers because it makes it harder for
>them to remove things that *really* need to be removed.

I think it's well understood that you can't put the internet back in 
the bottle.  But disallowing removals in the first place takes away 
the package author's right to decide what "really" means.

In any case, the developer is no worse off than in the case where 
they have to convince the PyPI operators something "really" needs to 
be removed, and they are better off because at least the official 
distribution point for their package no longer carries the broken release.