Re: Press inquiry from WIRED: What happens to open source projects when their maintainers pass away?
> From: Klint Finley mailto:[email protected]>> > Date: Tue, Oct 17, 2017 at 10:07 PM > Subject: Press inquiry from WIRED: What happens to open source projects when > their maintainers pass away? > To: > > > Hi, I'm a reporter for Wired.com and I'm working on a story about the > afterlife of open source projects after their maintainers pass away. > > In many cases, open source projects are owned by foundations that can > handle a transition. […] I just spent about 45 minutes on the phone with Klint, talking through CPAN, PAUSE, and how we handle situations where the original author / current maintainer is no longer responsive, or has retired, or passed away. Most of the questions he asked are explicitly addressed in the PAUSE Operating Model, so the timing was good :-) Neil
Press inquiry from WIRED: What happens to open source projects when their maintainers pass away?
-- Forwarded message -- From: Klint Finley Date: Tue, Oct 17, 2017 at 10:07 PM Subject: Press inquiry from WIRED: What happens to open source projects when their maintainers pass away? To: Hi, I'm a reporter for Wired.com and I'm working on a story about the afterlife of open source projects after their maintainers pass away. In many cases, open source projects are owned by foundations that can handle a transition. But in many cases, smaller projects can fall through the cracks. That's what happened with Ruby developer Jim Weirich's rspec-given testing tool. Justin Searls ended up taking over, but he had to talk Ruby Gems into giving him control over the project. That incident raises a number of questions about what to do in situations where multiple outside developers and projects depend on modules owned and maintained by a single developer. With that in mind I'm wondering if the CPAN project has any policies for reassigning ownership of modules in the event that an owner passes away. I'm also wondering if anyone over there knows of any other examples of notable orphaned open source projects. Thanks!
