Quoting Ovid:
Nothing wrong with a good-old-fashion hostile fork now and again :) But
hopefully we can avoid that.
I'd almost be inclined to have takeovers than forks, but I suspect
I'll be universally shouted down over that one. If module authors
are unwilling to fix bugs in critical proojects and not allow
comaintainers, the poor end-user is stuck.
Looking at the recent and past history of the CPAN, I'd say that
forks usually happen for young modules with very active development
(see the Class::DBI / DBIx::Class case). Mature modules look unsexy
to most people's eyes, even to the author's, and he or she is usually
quite eager to let someone else deal with the bugfixes.
Said in another way, if you feel that there is a number of modules that
need a new maintainer while bug are piling up, it's usually not because
the author doesn't want to give the co-maintenance, but because nobody
wants to deal with such unfun work.
Creating a web site which shows the modules in dire need of maintenance
is a good thing, but the next question is: how many people here will then
accept to maintain such modules? (History has shown that this number is
very low.)
--
Sébastien Aperghis-Tramoni
Close the world, txEn eht nepO.
