prerequisites for forking openNLP?

[Jim - FooBar();]

Hi everyone,

Can someone please shine some light  as to what needs to be done in 
order for someone to fork openNLP?It is an open-source project so 
presumably  not much...I work at the national centre for text-mining 
(NaCTem UK) and I'm very keen on forking openNLP and more specifically 
the namefind package which is very important for what i'm currently 
working on. I also know many people that would benefit from having my 
proposed changes (OPENNLP-496) in both the "finding aspect" & the 
"evaluation aspect" of NER. Obviously, you don't like what I'm proposing 
(fair enough...even though it makes perfect sense) so I think it's best 
if I stop pestering you and just create my own fork and repository to 
pull my dependencies from...So my question is: what do I need to do 
before i upload my fork on the Manchester University or NaCTeM web-site, 
apart the obvious (having mentions & links to original openNLP)?

Thanks in advance...

Jim