[tex-live] Removing the biber package from CTAN

[Zdenek Wagner]

2010/11/19 Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at>:
> Hi Philip, hi all,
>
>> > Greetings, I am a developer/current maintainer of the "biber" package.
>> > I'd like to remove this from CTAN at the moment as we now have
>> > binaries available via TLContrib and SF - the CTAN version is out of
>> > date and won't be updated directly until it's in TeXLive properly. Can
>> > someone let me know how to remove this package from CTAN? It seems to
>
> Of course everyone respects your wish to remove the package from CTAN,
> but I want to depose here that I consider this a bad move out of
> many reasons:
> - tlcontrib is not an official distribution channel of TeX Live, and
>  it can and will probably  not provide binaries for all supported
>  platforms, not speak of the fact to get them running on all platforms.
> - CTAN still *IS* the main TeX related distribution channel, and not
>  something like "TeX Live staging area". THere might be other people
>  wanting to grab biber from there.
> - Being out-of-date is the sole responsibility of people around biber.
>  THose who are uploading and preparing packages for TLContrib could
>  easily upload up to date sources and binaries to CTAN, too.
>
>> it's a bit sad, since i was browing the code in spare moments... :-}
>
> I agree with Robin here. For me is retracting from CTAN a very bad
> sign to the whole TeX community.
>
> I hope that those preparing packages for TLcontrib can also contribute
> to CTAN and the distribution of biber on CTAN, but of course as long
> as you Philip are voting for removal, it will stay like that.
>
> Speaking for myself, but from a TeX Live perspective
> slightly disappointed
>
Remember there are other distributions e.g. MiKTeX. They certainly
take packaes from CTAN. I am afraid they will not take SW from
TLcontrib. Out-of-date is often better than nothing.

> Norbert
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Norbert Preining            preining@{jaist.ac.jp, logic.at, debian.org}
> JAIST, Japan                                 TeX Live & Debian Developer
> DSA: 0x09C5B094   fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76  A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz