Open Ownership Pledge (finding co-maintainers or new project owners)

Introduction

The Open Ownership Pledge stimulates involvement of new developers in a project by the current maintainer's promise that:

• Issues are reviewed as quickly as is reasonable
• Changes done to the project are committed with attribution, therefore showing on the profile page of the author
• Commitment for any issue tagged with the Open Ownership Pledge leads to be co-maintainer
• Commitment for all project issues tagged Open Ownership Pledge leads to be the new project owner

It stimulates project owners to handover ownership by:

• Being able to indicate issues to be solved first to either boost development or test the capabilities of a potential new owner
• Providing some rules in the form of an oath by the new owner to guarantee good maintainership and continued development also after passing ownership

How to apply as project owner or co-maintainer on a pledged project

Work on all the unresolved project issues tagged Open Ownership Pledge to be the new project owner, or any project issues tagged Open Ownership Pledge to be co-maintainer. Assign issues to yourself to show others you are working on them (un-assign them if you become inactive in an issue). Once done add a comment, fo example:

I want to be project owner, and I promise to abide to the conditions of the Open Ownership Pledge as described. I have worked on all of the corresponding issues.

I offer to be co-maintainer and I promise to abide to the conditions of the Open Ownership Pledge as described. I have worked on one of the corresponding issues.

Oath by the current owner

The current project current owner promises:

• To transfer ownership to anyone that solves all issues tagged Open Ownership Pledge
• To make anyone solving one of those issues co-maintainer immediately
• The ownership does not pass to someone that does not has a proven track record related to the module solving relative complex issues

Oath by the new project owner

The new project current owner promises:

• To not remove any existing project maintainer (including the previous project owner) and leave all their permissions as they are
• To keep the note stating the original author, if present
• To not remove the previous Supporting organizations, if present
• To transfer ownership back to the last previous owner or by reopening this issue for an ownership change, if the necessary time for maintainership cannot be dedicated anymore
• To perform good maintainership

What is good maintainership?

• Review in timely manner any issues in Needs review status.
• Supplied merge requests will be committed with attribution to the initial author when reaching the Review & tested by community status.
• A new stable version will be created on a regular basis if code changes were introduced providing a list of related issues in the release notes.
• Keep the project page, README and other documentation updated.
• It is also recommended to follow Best practices for co-maintaining projects.

After an ownership change

The Open Ownership Pledge still applies but should not be right away open for another ownership change.

1. Remove the notice on the project page (introduced with point #3 in the last section)
2. Set the status of the Seeking new maintainer issue to Fixed
3. Verify all the issues tagged Open Ownership Pledge have their status set to Fixed
4. Edit the project page and set the Maintenance status field back from Seeking new maintainer to Actively maintained

Reopen for an ownership change

By the current owner

• When there are enough new complex issues and the current owner is no longer able to give the project enough "love" or just wants to hand the baton to someone capable, the previous owners can be contacted with a request to take over instead of opening for a new ownership change to someone new.

By the co-maintainers

• If it appears development or maintenance has stalled for a substantial period and the current owner does not have objections or does not respond within two weeks on a proposal to reactivate this issue to seek a new maintainer.

Steps

1. Select a series of unresolved relatively complex issues in the queue and tag them with Open Ownership Pledge.
2. Set the status of the project issue Seeking new maintainer to Active.
3. Restore the notice on the project page.

How to add the pledge to your own project (for project maintainers)

1. Open a new project issue Seeking new maintainer and copy/paste the text above.
2. Select a series of unresolved relatively complex issues in the queue and tag them with the Open Ownership Pledge and set them with as parent page the issue above Seeking new maintainer
3. Put a notice on the project page linking the last part to the newly created issue above, for example:
   

   This project can be taken over under the Open Ownership Pledge. Solve all the child issues of #2938240: Seeking new maintainer.

4. Edit the project page and set the Maintenance status field to Seeking new maintainer.

External resources

• Passing the baton of your contrib module — Internetdevels official blog