[rckoepke]

No, no, no - none of this is about legality. Just sometimes people bring it up as a framework for determining responsibilities, so I addressed it ahead of time. I don't think (legal requirements) == (responsibilities). The sets may have some overlap but clearly they are not identical.

Instead, I am just saying that if I upload a "cool tool" to github, and I notice that it has become super popular, and I don't have time/interest/inclination to maintain it --- I would personally feel a RESPONSIBILITY, and probably social obligation (not a legal obligation) to either put a note saying "this is not actively maintained, please find an up-to-date fork. user/cooltool seems to have community support but I can't personally endorse it." or simply make some other people additional/replacement maintainers for the project which I'm not interested in maintaining anymore.

[cycloptic]

Maybe you do, I'm sure people would appreciate that, but it's not necessary. The nature of these things is that the users are already "following the herd" to a degree. So if the maintainer becomes inactive and a fork picks up the interest, they will just move to that. No ceremony required.