[jordigh]

We kind of did this with a project I was working on once. Someone was being helpful, main maintainer was getting tired, so helpful guy got full rights to the repo. He went on a several-year-long frenzy of activity, up to being a release manager, putting lots of micro-optimisations into the code and still being generally helpful until he got sucked up by Google and vanished.

Sadly, lots and lots of little bugs and awkward design decisions crept through. Obscure ones, hard to find, and a coding style that tended towards obfuscation. Guy had a habit for assemblyish/fortranish code.

I think the lesson learned is, sure, maybe give the helpful guy full access, but still keep your eye on them and encourage everyone else to do so too.

[mikegerwitz]

> main maintainer was getting tired

Would the project have had much development at all without the "helpful guy"? If the maintainer was too tired to even keep an eye on him/her, then it sounds like the project would have stalled without that help.