For various reasons, obsolete packages can accumulate in Debian. They may be old versions kept around for compatibility. They may be things long obsoleted by a newer piece of software. Eventually, they're all cruft cluttering up our beautiful archive.
I'll briefly walk through the work I did to remove old versions of automake from the archive, including dramatized accounts of bug filings, NMUs, tools used, and maintainers cajoled. Then I'll lead a discussion of how we can make this easier, around these areas:
Hopefully we can share techniques and come up with ideas to make this easier in the future.