[Distutils] Create formal process for claiming 'abandoned' packages

[Steve Dower]

Donald Stufft wrote:
> Perhaps in Warehouse the procedure can be automated to some degree
> and a public record of what actions were taken and when? I don’t mean like 
> a public log of the actual email address or email content or anything of the
> sort. Just like a "attempted to contact on X date", "notified X thing on Y",
> "No response in X time, transfering ownership" kind of things.
>
> Maybe we could create something like python-updates which would be a read only
> mailing list which just posts a thread per request and updates it with the
> actions taken and stuff. People who care could subscribe to it without having
> to get all of distutils-sig or wahtever.
>
> Maybe it could even offer package authors the ability to mark a package as
> "Request For Adoption" saying that they have a package that they wrote, but
> that they no longer wish to maintain.
> 
> I don't know, I'm just tossing out some potentional ideas!

In the same vein, but at the more annoying end of the scale (I don't know how big a problem this really is) - build in an expiry date for every package. Every upload or ping from the maintainer extends it by 6-12 months, then automate a couple of emails in the last month before it expires. Nothing more has to happen, except that then it may be claimed by someone else and the communication has already been done. The manual process becomes checking a flag and the rest is automated. Regular emails also helps make sure that you track email address changes better.

I also like the "Request for Adoption" idea. Plenty of projects get wide use without developing a community where it's easy to find someone to take over.

Cheers,
Steve