TL;DR; - my modules had been up for adoption for *YEARS* already, but nobody was willing to take over maintenance - you can *NOT* just remove modules from CPAN. You can only schedule them for deletion after a week - during that period, no alarm bells started ringing that modules that had downstream dependencies, were being completely removed - I knew that my modules would always be available on BackPAN, and that it would be just a matter of someone re-uploading them and adjusting the master list. Annoying at best, because it would not be breaking anything that was already in production. - And I still had my own copies, so if anybody would have asked to please upload them again, I would have. Nobody did.
What this showed, is that CPAN has a definite vulnerability in this area: - someone (hopefully the owner) can schedule all modules for removal - if these modules have downstream dependencies, then that's too bad: they will stop working
Now, almost two years later, this vulnerability still exists.
As to the reason of me removing my Perl modules: it signalled my leaving the Perl community for good. Before that, I had still hope that some day, I actually would enjoy being part of the Perl community again.
Should I not have removed my modules like that? Well, I don't know how I could further indicate that I did not have any desire to keep maintaining them. The ADOPT-ME status was clearly not enough.
I'm not sure what you tried with ADOPTME, but transferring first-come permissions to ADOPTME would remove your ability to maintain them and allow anyone to adopt the permissions. Permissions for future uploads are a rather separate concern from the currently indexed latest version of the module that dependency chains rely on. The index does not include distributions on BackPAN, so such distributions are only available via manual intervention.
I banned him for responding to it being pointed out that it was an incredibly stupid upload by explaining it wasn't a problem because the slur in question was "just a word" and anyway, he called his black friends that and they didn't mind.
> Mr. Trout, in his self-assumed role of moderator of the then #perl6 channels
I took responsibility for the perl6 IRC infrastructure with Larry's active approval.
Jonathan Worthington was in no way involved in the unbanning process, only Liz being angry at me in private messages on behalf of her 'friend' until I gave up and lifted the ban.
> permaban on the channels as instated by Mr. Trout
The ban was intended to last while he thought about his mistake and considered whether that was the person he wanted to be going forwards.
I still think he would be in a better place today had he had that opportunity then.
> I'm not the only person who left the Perl community because of Mr. Trout's antics.
On a long enough timeline, anybody with an opinion and a spine will get into personality clashes that result in people leaving.
I know of several that were because of me, some of which I regret. I know of several that were because of you, some of which I hope you regret.
So it goes.