[tex-live] Removing the biber package from CTAN

[Norbert Preining]

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- Being out-of-date is the sole responsibility of people around biber.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

Norbert
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Norbert Preining            preining@{jaist.ac.jp, logic.at, debian.org}
JAIST, Japan                                 TeX Live & Debian Developer
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