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How project moderators handle requests to be project owner, maintainer, or co-maintainer

Last updated on
7 May 2026

In the following page, project maintainers will be generally used to refer to people with permissions on the project who are expected to handle the issues created to become project owner, maintainer, or co-maintainer.
In the specific, project maintainers means:

  • For requests to become project owner or take over a project namespace, it means the project owner.
  • For offers to become co-maintainer/maintainer, it means a maintainer (including the project owner), or a co-maintainer with the Administer maintainers permission.
  • For issues created to verify the project is still maintained/developed, it means people with the Write to VCS permission. 

When a request to become co-maintainer, maintainer or project owner of a project hosted on drupal.org is moved to the Drupal.org project ownership queue, project moderators will:

  • For projects that opted into security advisory policy, verify the person who makes the request can opt projects into security advisory coverage

  • Verify that the person who moved the issue in the Drupal.org project ownership queue is the person who created the issue

  • Verify the issue has been first open in the project issue queue and left there at least 14 days

  • Verify there are no other requests open for the same project (even in the project issue queue)

If the first three conditions are not met, the issue is moved back to the project issue queue. If there are other requests for the same project, those issues will be added as related issues, and a comment left for the person who made the request.

For requests that are not moved back to the project issue queue, project moderators will then:

  • Check if the project maintainers are still active on drupal.org, by either looking at when the last comment or post was created or at the last time the project maintainer logged in on drupal.org

  • If the project maintainers are still active on drupal.org, contact the project maintainers who are still active; after 14 days without any reply, a comment will be left asking the person who made the offer if there is still interest in 

  • If the project maintainers are still active on drupal.org, project moderators will accept the request directly

  • Before changing the project maintainers/co-maintainers/owner, project moderators will verify the person who did the offer is still interested

Requests to become maintainer from a co-maintainer

When the request to become maintainer is done from a person who is already co-maintainer of that project, project moderators should use their best judgment, based on any known information about the project maintainers involvement. For example, if the project maintainers are known to have departed the community a significant period of time ago or last supported the module during a major version of Drupal that is now past the end of its life, a waiting period is likely not necessary.
If it is unclear, a contact message should be sent to the project maintainers. For these cases, about a week of grace time should be more than sufficient. 

Changes in project ownership related to a claim by the trademark owner do not need to wait 14 days, as we are compelled by the law.

As per Transferring a project that used a trademark in its short name, project moderators should escalate to Drupal Association staff those cases that are not resolvable through cooperation by the existing project maintainers and the trademark holder.

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