[development] adoption for 'abandoned' modules?

[Angela Byron]

On 21-Jan-07, at 1:02 AM, Darren Oh wrote:

> On Jan 20, 2007, at 10:31 PM, Angela Byron wrote:
>
>> Sorry, but I totally disagree with this.
>>
>> Drupal.org provides a built-in means of contacting maintainers to  
>> get support: issues tagged "support request" ... responsible  
>> maintainers will be watching their issue queues and responding to  
>> these.
>
> Angela Byron is an exceptionally responsive developer. Not all  
> responsible maintainers can constantly monitor their issue queues.

I'm not talking about constant monitoring. But issue queues are the  
main mechanism where features and bug reports are posted. So yes, in  
order to be a responsible maintainer you _do_ need to be keeping an  
eye on your queues, or else turn on the feature in project module to  
get mails sent to them when isues are posted.

I'm actually a horribly responsive developer when it comes to my  
contrib modules. ;) But the second someone posts a, "Hey, looking for  
a co-maintainer?" issue, I would either promote them, or else  
respond, "No, I'm just really hitting a busy patch, but if you would  
care to test some of these patches in the queue and mark them  
appropriately, I'd really appreciate it." However, if the issue  
instead languishes for 3 weeks with no response, it would be very  
easy to make the case that "This maintainer is not taking care of  
their issue queue," and have one of the Drupal admins make the switch.

OTOH, if you send me an e-mail, lots of things could've happened to  
it: it could've been caught by a spam filter, it could've been an old  
e-mail address that doesn't get a response anymore, it could've been  
sent to one of my mail addresses that get filtered as mailing list  
mails that I only occasionally check, etc. etc. Furthermore, an issue  
is far preferable, because it could become a single request could  
grow into a central rallying point for several people who have an  
interest around a module to collaborate together to take care of it.  
I've seen this happen with modules from time to time, such as  
buddylist and privatemsg.

So yes, down with e-mail, up with issue queues. :)

-Angie