The upstream repository or file download for these packages has disappeared.

Or at least it wasn't available for a long time; in some cases the upstream might be available again. I do not check to make sure this is not the case. If you find such a package, then please let me know.

Of course there are many more packages whose upstream has disappeared, then those listed here, many of which can be found on the Emacsattic.

Those unmaintained packages that made it into the orphanage instead of just the attic, did so because other mirrored packages depend on them, and/or because they are available from Melpa (I mirror all packages that are available from there).

The upstream repositories for these packages still existed (or at least they still existed when the packages were added here), but the packages have issues that have to be fixed and the maintainers did not respond when I contacted them. I have patched these packages here in the orphanage to fix these issues.

• Multiple packages bundle hyperspec but none of them is the authoritive upstream. Attempts to get the various non-upstreams talking have failed so far.

These packages are being distributed on the Emacswiki and other packages that are not distributed on the Emacswiki depend on them. Anyone can edit packages on the Emacswiki, which is a big security risk, so eventually we want to remove those packages from Melpa. Not importing these packages from the wiki anymore is a step into that direction.

Also see Melpa issue #2342.

The tools used to maintain the Emacsmirror do not support bzr, cvs, darcs, or fossil. So I manually import the upstream repositories into a git repository on the orphanage and then import the resulting git repositories as if that were the actual upstream.

I do not regularly update these repositories. If you find that they are outdated, then please let me know. However many of these package repositories have not seen a commit in a decade.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (emir–list-orphans "manual tarball import") #+END_SRC tarball

Sadly there is one package where "orphan" has a more literal meaning than what I had in mind when I created the Emacs Orphanage. RIP François.