Taking over the project (was Re: [ANNOUNCE] Cheetah Community Edition v2.1.0)

On Tuesday 28 April 2009 15:45:14 Michael DeHaan wrote:
> Projects are not really owned; 

I could not disagree more.

> anyone, or even seeking approval, it's about looking after the bits.

It's not like you're putting kids to daycare for few hours.

It's his pet project, he has done the development decisions
so far and might not like the directions that takes place when
he's absent. If that would take over the community installations, 
he could consider it as permanent damage if applications would
adapt to those changes. And I emphasize the term *could*.

He might be very happy to people to do so. The fact is that you
don't know. That's why you need to go through the reasonable 
effort and try to reach him, by phone for example. Who knows, 
he might be in hospital, jail or just on worktrip on oil rig
or in jungle without a net connection.

In opensc project one core maintainer had to leave project for
a year and he got very pissed by the changes others did during
his absense. That was the reason why project changed its domain.
Also, the people doing the changes asked me to mediate between the
parties and I did the phone calls as we shared the native language.

This is an upstream single project, not a small effort package 
maintainership in distros that doesn't count that much of work.
Also distros are more forced to release dates and unmaintained
pkgs get dropped otherwise.

Forking is okay if you feel so, then you also call it with 
different name.

Again, I think you're doing the right thing by stepping forward
but you should call him and ask the permission to do so. Once he
gives ok or you find out why he's unreachable, you've moral right
to take over.

At least that's how I think, consider putting yourself into his
shoes. 


Tuju

-- 
Varo hattupäisiä autoilijoita.

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