Comment 9 for bug 1166230

I endorse throwing it into ubuntu-base, which is code for "mysterious stuff you don't understand". I would also support just having a new "backwards compatibility" section to carry oldlibs.

As for why dummy packages exist, it's not just to handle old dependencies that haven't been updated. Sometimes apt's resolver needs a transitional package because it refuses to uninstall a package on a purported upgrade to that very package. So two upgrades have to happen:

wine1.4 (version 1.4-1) upgrades to dummy wine1.4 (version 1.6-2), which depends on real wine1.6.

One LTS release later, when I've removed wine1.4 from the archive and know that all wine1.4 are dummy packages, I can then have wine1.6 (version 1.6-2) which conflicts with wine1.4 and uninstalls it properly. One more LTS later I can remove those crufty bits from the metadata.

So, yes, a dummy package will thus linger for upwards of 2 years. Precise had wine1.4. Trusty will need a wine1.4 dummy package. 16.04 LTS can finally get rid of it using breaks/replaces. 18.04 LTS can avoid mentioning wine1.4 entirely.