many sites for open source applications (freshmeat for example) give VERY CLEAR details of development progress, which in turn can give people a fair idea if the application is actually being worked on.
It's of note that not all applications when using app manager provide a "description" under details.
Making this mandatory with a changelog would be a quick and easy way for users to actually find out if an application has been sitting in the repo for months and months with no active development.

including a separate "archive" repo (as previously suggested) to move apps that have had no devel for more than 12 months would also clean things up
just my two cents.....

For extras, a description is mandatory so soon after getting into -testing it should have one if it doesn't. For -devel, well, if you don't know exactly what it is, you shouldn't run it.

At least one problem we ran into with changelogs is how much to show? Who knows when the user last updated and the way it was handled HAM didn't have a good way to grab all the changes inbetween.

Faster Application Manager allows for changelogs but that is because it queries maemo.org/packages for the information (I think?) which isn't too fast for a single package.

-devel only really needs tidying for performance, you should know what you are touching and who the author is before touching a package. -testing is the one that could use cleanup since it is an in between and an assortment of people ("usually" testers) load up any application.

@ epage.

Knowing what you're installing is a basic requirement for any OS.
That begins with knowing if you actually need it in the first place.

Being able to quickly determine (via changelog) if an application is actually under continuous devel/improvement is one way of helping to decide if an application is going to provide a suitable solution to your needs......
The "how much of the changeleog do we show" bit, I agree, is a challenge, especially with devs who do a lot of updating to their packages........

Personally, it doesn't bother me that much. I only install what I need and usually do a bit of research beforehand.
In fact, with the exception of fMMS, Wireless hotspot and a few others,the N900 gives me pretty much everything I need out of the box. The rest of it is falls into "bonus stuff to have" and "entertainemnt value"