> I think there should be some rules of thumb.

In open source we should rather talk about habits and culture, if there are rules they developed from tradition.

> how to minimize the damage from a possible bad decision in the first place? 

Flag your module as experimental, till its implementation is fixed.

Or contact the users, if there are no reverse dependencies you should be fine.

> we'd run out of CPAN namespaces

Not if you keep the old API for a deprecation period.

For instance you could refactor the "bad" part of module XXX to XXX::Old, and use it internally.

Or new users need a use XXX :modern attribute or version number during a grace period.

You should know best what is feasable!

Sorry, I'm not aware of any policy which will safe you from being called names by old users if you break their code, even after warning them for years.

It's up to you. .. :)

Just have a look at CGI.pm

Cheers Rolf
(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice

In reply to Re^3: Sane deprecation policy for a CPAN module? by LanX
in thread Sane deprecation policy for a CPAN module? by Dallaylaen

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