Hi, FWIW most maintainers will accept patches even if they're not happy or motivated, it just takes a little time. If you show a little stamina they'll grant you collaborator rights after a couple of good contributions. It may not be their ideal course of action, but people like Kevin tend to be nice and helpful even if your actions aren't perfectly aligned with their wishes.
So if you want to contribute a little, just go ahead, read the issues https://gitlab.com/muttmua/mutt/-/issues , answer some or most, send in a nice small PR for an issue or two, don't worry about it if you're absent for a month now and then. After half a year or maybe a year you'll have contributor status, can close issues and merge people's code. At that point you can submit a talk for FOSDEM 2027, ask the ≅π other people who have also contributed in the past year whether they plan to attend, and have beer with some other lone email hackers. (If you submit a talk about Mutt it's likely to be accepted BTW.) Arnt January 5, 2026 at 5:16 PM, "Kurt Hackenberg" <[email protected] mailto:[email protected]?to=%22Kurt%20Hackenberg%22%20%3Ckh%40panix.com%3E > wrote: > > On Mon, Jan 05, 2026 at 10:11:42AM +0000, Crystal Kolipe via Mutt-dev wrote: > > > > > Well, maintenance mode and low growth doesn't sound like so much of a > > problem > > as an almost silent development mailing list does. > > > Seems like there's not much point writing code when it won't be accepted. >
