Plowshare is a tool for interacting with file sharing websites. The plowshare
package itself contains only the framework (implemented in shell scripts) but
separate "modules" are needed to actually implement support for specific
websites.

The modules need to change rapidly to keep up with developments on the file
sharing websites, and as such are not a great fit for Debian packaging (I tried
in the past but eventually removed them). The upstream-endorsed way to get the
modules is to use a bundled script to download them, but there are security
concerns with downloading a bunch of shell scripts from the internet and
blindly executing them. There is also a security concern with the use of
a javascript engine to interact with the sometimes sketchy file sharing sites
that resulted in a Debian patch to disable this feature by default. With the JS
engine disabled, many modules don't work.

Upstream development on these modules has essentially stopped, and presumably
many are now broken. In theory you can write your own modules, in which case
the plowshare package has some value by itself. I suspect that few people would
do this though, especially without any public place to share modules and the
burden of maintaining them.

Popcon stats show a decline in reports for plowshare since the removal of the
modules. It is a leaf package with no reverse dependencies.

We believe that the bug you reported is now fixed; the following
package(s) have been removed from unstable:

 plowshare |    2.1.7-4 | source, all

------------------- Reason -------------------
ROM; effectively unmaintained upstream
----------------------------------------------

Note that the package(s) have simply been removed from the tag
database and may (or may not) still be in the pool; this is not a bug.
The package(s) will be physically removed automatically when no suite
references them (and in the case of source, when no binary references
it).  Please also remember that the changes have been done on the
master archive and will not propagate to any mirrors until the next
dinstall run at the earliest.

Packages are usually not removed from testing by hand. Testing tracks
unstable and will automatically remove packages which were removed
from unstable when removing them from testing causes no dependency
problems. The release team can force a removal from testing if it is
really needed, please contact them if this should be the case.

We try to close bugs which have been reported against this package
automatically. But please check all old bugs, if they were closed
correctly or should have been re-assigned to another package.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 1011590@bugs.debian.org.

The full log for this bug can be viewed at https://bugs.debian.org/1011590

This message was generated automatically; if you believe that there is
a problem with it please contact the archive administrators by mailing
ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Thorsten Alteholz (the ftpmaster behind the curtain)