[solatic]

Serious question: why doesn't OpenSSH declare, with about a year's notice ahead of time, the intent to cut a new major release that drops support for password-based authentication?

[janosdebugs]

There are very legit reasons to use passwords, for example in conjunction with a second factor. Authentication methods can also be chained.

[DEADMINCE]

Password authentication is still entirely necessary. I don't want to have to setup keys just to ssh into a VM I just setup, as one very minor example.

[jamesrr39]

By the time it gets into distros' package managers, is it not often that long (or more) anyway?