On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 10:01:40PM +1000, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote: [...]
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.
No matter what the time limit for a response is, there is a risk that the original maintainer has a very valid reason for not responding in time. E.g. there are many countries where vacations of more than 2 weeks is common, health issues, etc. So is it worth considering a revert-to-previous-maintainer clause as well? /M -- Magnus Therning OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4 email: magnus@therning.org jabber: magnus@therning.org twitter: magthe http://therning.org/magnus Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term. -- Alan Kay