The founders of the Packman package repository have announced the decision to discontinue it on December 31, 2026, if no one is found to continue working on the project. The Packman project (not to be confused with the package manager pacman) was created 25 years ago and develops an independent repository of RPM packages for openSUSE and SUSE Linux distributions, aimed at providing newer versions of packages or components that cannot be included in official repositories for legal or licensing reasons.
The decision to close the project was made due to a lack of time and resources to continue maintenance amid a general decline in user demand for classic repositories like Packman against the backdrop of new software delivery technologies such as Flatpak. The maintainers of Packman decided not to prolong the situation into a gradual decline and leave users with abandoned packages, but to completely finish the project or pass it into new hands.
Those wishing to continue work on Packman will need to create and maintain their own infrastructure. They will receive assistance with setup and be provided with accumulated experience, as well as system images for builds. servers and scripts for publishing and signing packages. The new team will need to handle tasks such as managing hosting, build infrastructure, and repositories, as well as coordinating the community. If a new team is not formed, all build servers and repositories will be shut down on December 31, 2026.
As an alternative, there is consideration being given to dividing tasks among several teams or integrating Packman into the OBS (openSUSE Build Service) service, but the purpose of such integration is questionable, as OBS does not allow the building of multimedia codecs for licensing reasons, which is what Packman was created for.
Source: opennet.ru
