[Project_owners] New Adoption Policy proposal

[Axel Hecht]

A few comments, or just a proposal:

I miss the velvet glove to the iron fist here. I don't think that we're 
going to have to deal with this 5 times a day, like I expect that for SF.

So I'd prefer that some kind of drivers try to mediate in what I'd 
concern just a conflict between folks.

There should be concrete proposals, like patches. If there's a lack of 
uptake on those, that can be for many reasons, and I'd hope that there 
is a group, if it's mozdev admins or some larger group, that takes a 
look and tries to get people together.

Taking over existing projects no matter which should really just be a 
solution for the case where the owner got run over by a truck. 
Literally. We did this for folks being drafted for military service 
without internet access for > 1 year, for example. One other time I 
looked for an owner of a patch, he was indeed dead.

All other cases should work towards concensus or fork, IMHO.

I would expect that in most occasions, a simple "mind taking a look at 
that patch and do a review comment?" should be good enough. Or if the 
owner says "it's too big and too crufty for me right now", poke 
project-owners for a volunteer to do a review. Anyone here CCed on the 
xpath generator bug? Nice stuff, still it took a lot of time just 
reviewing it.

Whether this ends up with an additional peer or a change in ownership 
doesn't really matter to me this much.

Oh, and I think that a year is too long, that's the Firefox release 
cycle, roughly. I guess that a month of lack of feedback can be a good 
time to poke from mozdev admins. If there is a hard battle going on, we 
should be willing and able to mediate earlier, though.

Axel

Scott wrote:
> Hello project developers,
> 
> The thread is the start of a new Adoption Policy proposal on MozDev.
> 
> The current Adoption Policy is more of a informal one and I am proposing
> a formal one that will eliminate the following problems with the current
> policy... the main issue at hand is that currently if a project owner
> has stopped doing any work on there project they have indefinite rights
> to keep ownership, even if others have made contributions in any fashion
> to keep the addon working, EG; attachments made to existing un-answered bugs
> 
> These proposed changes will set a defined time limit when a project can
> be handed over to a new maintainer even if the maintainer comes back.
> 
> 1) Project has not been updated over 1 year. (Updated means no bug, web,
> mailing list or source has been replied/answered/updated by the original
> maintainer.)
>     Also this does not include "future promises" of working on it.
> 
> 2) The owner has not replied to any emails prior to the 1 year.
> 
> An example to this policy comes from SourceForge.....
> 
> Any GPL or Other license that is considered Open Source project that has
> been inactive for over 1 year can be taken over by a new developer
> regardless of any "promises by the original developer". The original
> developer can not take his project back after it has been transferred.
> The original developer however can ask to be added as co-developer by
> the new maintainer but that is not enforce by any staff. If the SF
> project is GPL and is transferred the original developer can not demand
> it back for any reason. Emails are sent for that reason, to get the
> original maintainer to reply.
> 
> ----
> 
> Comments to this proposal ?
> 
> -- Scott
>