> Who decides what degree of “popularity” is sufficient to maintain default support?
Each upstream project and upstream distro is responsible for deciding on such a policy for themselves.
Many upstream distros do just that already with their packaging.
For example, you may not find a Linux kernel image that will work on your Pentium III CPU on Debian’s main repositories. Or an OpenSSL binary package.
Such decisions are highly arbitrary and at the discretion of the people who do the maintenance work and pay the hosting bills.
Being able to draw the line somewhere is a feature. It can help keep maintainers from burning out or giving up under the load of support requests.
Given the situation of a specific project, its individual goals, and the people involved, I would expect their decision to take into account many more factors than just the “so disused that no one complains” axis.
Each upstream project and upstream distro is responsible for deciding on such a policy for themselves.
Many upstream distros do just that already with their packaging. For example, you may not find a Linux kernel image that will work on your Pentium III CPU on Debian’s main repositories. Or an OpenSSL binary package.
Such decisions are highly arbitrary and at the discretion of the people who do the maintenance work and pay the hosting bills.
Being able to draw the line somewhere is a feature. It can help keep maintainers from burning out or giving up under the load of support requests.
Given the situation of a specific project, its individual goals, and the people involved, I would expect their decision to take into account many more factors than just the “so disused that no one complains” axis.