Re: What to do about unmaintained ELPA packages

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I'd like to ask, if there some point at which should one should go from
  > regarding packages like these from "de facto unmaintained" to "actually
  > abandoned"?  Perhaps if there was no real activity for over a year,
  > despite constant contributions?  Would it make sense to call for anyone
  > new to take over maintaining the package?

There is no need to have a rigid rule about this, but we should have a
rough guide to go by.  "Serious problems go unfixed for a year" sounds
like enough reason to judge that there is a problem in maintaining
that package.  We don't need a rule about what we do if that happens,
but we should take note of such packages and decide what to do.

If a package is important enough, we might want to take action sooner
than that.  We can fix any GNU ELPA package if we see fit.  We should
try to discuss that with its maintainers first, but if they are
nonresponsive, we don't have to wait to satisfy some rule.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)