With my wl-pprint-text package, Jason Dagit suggested to me on #haskell that it would make sense to make such a pretty-printer be class-based so that the same API could be used for String, ByteString, Text, etc. I was thinking of doing so, and in such a case it would probably make the most amount of sense to actually then migrate the package back to the wl-pprint package instead of defining yet another package (and corresponding namespace), especially as I recalled from when I first started hacking on wl-pprint-text at the beginning of the year that the last (and only) upload had been in 2007 by Stefan O'Rear. As such, I was going to email Stefan and asked if he minded if I took over maintaining wl-pprint. However, when I went to the package page to get his email address, I saw that Otakar Smrz had released a new version about a month ago, and that the only change in the package that I could find was that OverlappingInstances was added to the .cabal file (which I thought wouldn't make a difference anyway). Now, for all I know, Otakar had already asked Stefan for permission to take over the package (I've CC'd both of them just in case). But even if he didn't, we don't officially have any policies set in place - especially ones that are enforced by requiring registering a package and specifying a maintainer - to indicate that such a thing shouldn't be done. Furthermore, if packages aren't announced then there's no way for people to know that there _is_ a new maintainer. This situation also arose last year [1], and was resolved by someone volunteering to take over a package. However, no formal policy was set in place (despite one being proposed). As such, I'd like to propose the following policy based upon the one Ben Millwood proposed last time on how to take over maintainership of a package that hasn't been updated for a while: 1. Email the current listed maintainer and wait a specified period of time (e.g. 2 weeks). 2. Email haskell-cafe, explicitly CC'ing maintainers of reverse dependencies (at least those that are themselves still active) and request permission to take over. This way, people who know the maintainer might point out that they are indeed still around, etc. 3. If no-one objects within another two weeks, announce that you have taken over maintainership with a new email (in case people are ignoring the previous thread). 4. Upload a point release of the previous package (assuming it follows the PVP) with yourself as the new maintainer (just to get it out there). Alternatively, if you already have a new version ready to go then upload that. Of course, having a policy like this is useless if there is no way to enforce it. Is it possible at the very least to have Hackage note when a new version of a package is uploaded with a new maintainer and require it to be approved by someone before it iis officially available? I think this would be the bare minimum (as opposed to requiring explicit logins on a per-package basis or some kind of signing) required for this kind of scheme to be effective. [1]: http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2010-August/081353.html and http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2010-August/082319.html -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com