This is basically a duplicate of a pkgdb RFE I filed last year:

https://fedorahosted.org/packagedb/ticket/240

It would be nice if packagedb would disable bugzilla components when they have been retired in all current fedora releases. This is possible with the bugzilla XMLRPC API.

Basically, in pkgdb-sync-bugzilla.in, where you call server.editcomponents, you need to do

data["is_active"] = bool(component_is_retired_and_blocked_in_all_branches())

(That function doesn't exist so would need to be implemented. And that suggestion was relevant for pkgdb1 but I don't seen any instance of editcomponents in pkgdb2)

The component is then hidden in the BZ web UI component list, but bugs aren't closed, searches can still be done, etc.

An example of why this is useful: we last had a 'kvm' package in fedora 4 years ago, it was retired in favor or merging with the 'qemu' package. but the 'kvm' component exists in bugzilla, and collects misfiled bug reports all the time. yet there's no way in packagedb for me to even add myself to the bug CC list, so it's a huge pain. Not to mention dropping all the actual retired components from bugzilla will hopefully speed up filing new reports, changing component of existing bug, etc.