| A few questions that I anticipate: --- Shouldn't you find a replacement maintainer? That's ideal (and compatible with this proposal), but it shouldn't be a requirement for stepping down. --- Couldn't you just update the README when a project's inactive? It would be good housekeeping to periodically do this for stale projects, but that's quite pro-active. Plus, it only tells users when it's too late - it doesn't give them any sense of how soon that might happen. (Also, the latest commit or "last publish" for packages might be misinterpreted as an active contribution.) --- How could anybody build on a project that has a finite lifetime? We're already living with that uncertainty, it's just invisible. And as I said in the README: "If you need stronger guarantees, you may need to produce/negotiate them yourself". If an open-source dependency is essential to your project, then it's not unreasonable to have a support agreement in place, or have a plan for who'll do buxfixes if the maintainer steps back. |