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Ask HN: Help Main open-source maintainer gone AWOL. What do I do?

2 points by robise ↗ HN
The main maintainer of a popular Ruby gem, hosted on Github, is not responding to mentions in Issues (I have no other means of getting hold of them.) It's been over 8 months since I've heard from them.

I am another maintainer, but was given maintainer rights specifically to support a new feature that I added.

What should I do? People are still raising new issues and Pull Requests, but I’ve been reluctant to make major changes as I’m not comfortable just forging ahead making changes without the main maintainer's approval because 1. it's his repo and 2. he asked me to support the feature I added, not to be responsible for, and sweeping changes to the whole gem.

I've already emailed the original creator of the gem, and someone else listed as a maintainer for the project that I've never interacted with, and doesn't seem to have been involved recently either.

I really need some advice or suggestions. What do you think I should do?

Some options I can think of: 1. do nothing and let the project languish 2. make the changes I see fit to his official repo, including merging Pull Requests etc 3. make a fork and make the changes there, accepting that most people won't get the new changes 4. as 3, but update the Rubygems.org listing for the project to point to my new fork 5. something else???

4 comments

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ximeng
Fork and make changes. If you have access update read me to point to your new project. Give it a similar name and add a new entry to ruby gems.org
brudgers
"AWOL" is an acronym for "Absent without leave". My understanding is that expression of the perception that open source contributors are obligated to stay active in projects, is one of the reasons open source contributors burn out.

The person who left and the other contributor are in pretty much the same situation, shoulder major responsibility for the project or walk away and let it live or die based on someone else stepping forward.

Good luck.

robise
Hi, I'm aware of the official meaning of the acronym, but my usage was based on my belief that in everyday language, people use it to mean "vanished" or "disappeared".

I'm aware of the connotations that this has in the terms of Open-source, but was not in any way implying that the person had an obligation to continue work on this project (quite the opposite, I simply wanted their go-ahead/approval for me to maintain the project myself, before just going ahead and making changes to __their personal Github repo__). I was using the term in a way that I thought added a slight, humorous hyperbole to get people's attention on Hacker News in the hope of getting their advice.

I would certainly not have used this term to the maintainer in question, for the reasons you describe: I would not want to imply they had any obligation. I have no problem with a maintainer not wanting to continue any further work on a project they lead, I just think it would be helpful if they left instructions for how other maintainers should proceed, or at least respond to requests for clarification.

brudgers
The vector of the obligation is stewardship.