Martin McGrath

Let me preface this short post with this, I don't have the solution to this problem. Perhaps there is someone in the wider Perl space who is well placed to pick this up, but there seems to be little going on in terms of community engagement.

In the first week of 2021 I noticed a link to this sunset message for rt.cpan behind displayed on the rt.cpan homepage. Firstly I believe the notification on the page could be highlighted better, grey on grey, on a page with lots of grey isn't exactly eye catching.

At the time the linked article didn't contain much information, besides a date. It has since been updated with links to resources to migrate tickets elsewhere.

A reply to my post in the perlmonks news section was concerning to me, I shortly found the infrastructure working group post on topicbox (which I find no link to on any of the perl websites, or release documentation). This thread was concerning in so much as a single volunteer has decided to step back, which is of course fine, but it doesn't seem like the option of asking the wider community if anyone would be willing to step up and take it over has been explored. It doesn't even seem to be being openly discussed.

On the day it was posted I replied to A Static archive or rt.cpan.org, raising some concerns. The site told me my response was awaiting author moderation, as yet it remains unpublished.

I registered and was approved on Topicbox, posted in the thread linked above, raising some concerns about how this is is going, and how this has been communicated with the wider community. This too is apparently still in a moderation queue.

I reached out to Ricardo Signes, asking for clarity on the situation, Richardo responded to say that the static archive was more likely to be the course of action rather than someone else picking up the operation rt.cpan.

Paul Evans has posted FYI rt.cpan.org is going away over on p5p, which contains lots of good information, the whole thread is really worth reading, including the quote:

"To emphasise again: in 41 days time the bug tracker used by nearly 80%
of all of CPAN is going to be shut down and become unavailable for
either historic or newly-reported bugs. We *need* to find a solution in
that time."

Karen Etheridge posted a reply ending:

"I want to be clear that it is totally acceptable for a volunteer to decide
that they can't or won't have the time/energy/enthusiasm to continue a
task. Volunteer effort is greatly appreciated while it is there, but it
cannot be presumed to be provided in perpetuity. However, I find it greatly
distressing that the option for new volunteer(s) to step in and take over
is not being permitted. This is not something that can or should be decided
unilaterally."