4 ms·

Maybe a bot that once every three months (or whatever time period you prefer) does a commit to the changelog that says "I am [not] still maintaining this projec

by saghm 4y ago

Maybe a bot that once every three months (or whatever time period you prefer) does a commit to the changelog that says "I am [not] still maintaining this project" and it sends you an email a week before to hit a toggle to remove the "not". Then in the readme you can put a paragraph saying "I use Maintaina-bot (tm), and I commit to clicking the button every three months as long as I'm maintaining this project". It's a little silly, but I could imagine that if this become a common enough thing, people would start to trust it.

ricardobeat 4y ago
This is already available in reverse: you can mark a repository as unmaintained in GH to let people know you wont touch it anymore.
- saghm 4y ago
  My thinking is that someone forgetting about a project, not caring about it, or for some reason being unable to update it (e.g. losing access to an account or even being physically unable due to injury or death) might not update the project to indicate this; I think a lot of the wariness of older projects that haven't been recently touched is because it's hard to tell the difference between "no changes need to be made so I'm leaving it untouched but monitoring" and "no one is even looking at this and if a change needs to be made, no one knows".
vbezhenar 4y ago
You can update copyright comments once a year.
- rjmunro 4y ago
  You should only do that if you have changed something. Otherwise you are falsely extending the period before the work enters the public domain.
johanbcn 4y ago
Someone will then come up with "Maintaina-bot-bot", so that we don't have to bother clicking that button. Programmers are lazy creatures.
- saghm 4y ago
  The laziness (which I have no issues admitting I also have!) is exactly why I think having to explicitly act each time to indicate ownership is important; otherwise, it would be impossible to tell the difference between software that's maintained but hasn't needed updates from something that no one is maintaining anymore, which is the issue we have now.
rishabhkaul1 4y ago
I think a mix of your suggestion + https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32994453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32994453 might be good, no?

by saghm 4y ago

ricardobeat 4y ago

This is already available in reverse: you can mark a repository as unmaintained in GH to let people know you wont touch it anymore.

saghm 4y ago
My thinking is that someone forgetting about a project, not caring about it, or for some reason being unable to update it (e.g. losing access to an account or even being physically unable due to injury or death) might not update the project to indicate this; I think a lot of the wariness of older projects that haven't been recently touched is because it's hard to tell the difference between "no changes need to be made so I'm leaving it untouched but monitoring" and "no one is even looking at this and if a change needs to be made, no one knows".

vbezhenar 4y ago

You can update copyright comments once a year.

rjmunro 4y ago
You should only do that if you have changed something. Otherwise you are falsely extending the period before the work enters the public domain.

johanbcn 4y ago

Someone will then come up with "Maintaina-bot-bot", so that we don't have to bother clicking that button. Programmers are lazy creatures.

saghm 4y ago
The laziness (which I have no issues admitting I also have!) is exactly why I think having to explicitly act each time to indicate ownership is important; otherwise, it would be impossible to tell the difference between software that's maintained but hasn't needed updates from something that no one is maintaining anymore, which is the issue we have now.

rishabhkaul1 4y ago

I think a mix of your suggestion + https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32994453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32994453 might be good, no?