In article
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Sawyer X
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> - Have a process in which someone wants to take over a module, and the
> author is asked. If he does not reply within... oh, I don't know, 6
> months? 1 year?

We have that. Write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] when you want to take over a
module. Post somewhere public that you intend to take over the module,
and the PAUSE admins try to contact him too. If there is no response in
a coupel of weeks, we transfer the module.

See the established policy in the CPAN FAQ:

http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html

There are two questions to look at: 

* How do I go about maintaining a module when the author is
unresponsive?
* How do I adopt or take over a module already on CPAN?

> - Maybe have a timeout period (again, 6-12 months I think) that after
> that period a module is now considered (and flagged) "a community held
> module" which means any developer can request to be assigned as
> co-maintainer to it.

I'm not sure how that's different than what I jut said. We are working
on a way to list modules that the author has said that modules can be
immediately transferred, but modules won't automatically be flagged as
available.

> - Of course, we need to make sure that new comers don't just take old
> modules (which work very good) and break them 

You can never assure that, and who would decide and monitor that
anyway? Even if the module transfers to a new author, the older
versions stay in the original authors directory.

It's rare, though, that people take over modules that work very well so
this isn't a big deal.

> - Maybe have developers apply once a year (reminder system, anyone?)
> to make sure their module is still under their sole authorship. Like,
> get a small email from the reminder system of PAUSE and just reply
> with an empty msg content.

There module is always under their sole authorship even if they

> - The trickiest: what if I wrote a module, but I don't want to add to
> it, and I don't want anyone else touching it ever - I want it the way
> it is and that's it. Do we fork it?

You fork it. The module belongs to the author until he says otherwise
or he disappears completely.

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