Etiquette for taking over a repo/crate

Hello, fellow Rustaceans!
I've had my eyes on the ganache crate for a few days or so now, and I see that there has been no activity since July 2019 (well, until I opened an issue on the repo). I'd like to maintain it, but he seems unresponsive. Granted, I've only waited for less than a day, so it may just be my impatience acting up.
Thanks!

Not everyone is glued to a computer, particularly when they or their family have a major crisis (such as the current pandemic). I suggest that you clone the repo and do your development on that.

If/when the crate owner comes up for air and replies to your request, you'll be able to discuss your proposed contribution further with them. If that doesn't happen before you finish your changes, you can always publish your version as a parallel crate with the same search-locater terms.

4 Likes

Ok!
About the license, though, it's GPL3. I would like an MIT or Zlib license. But, that is not possible under the terms of the GPL. I guess I'll just wait for now, though, it isn't the most urgent or anything.

Expecting a response in less than a day from a random volunteer on the Internet is completely and totally unreasonable. I am personally fairly active, and it might take me months to respond to an issue.

With respect to the license, you cannot relicense it without the original copyright holders' permission. It doesn't matter what your preferences are.

If you want a similar crate under a permissive license, then you'll need to do one of the following:

  1. Find an alternative already built.
  2. Convince the author to relicense. (Which can be a giant pain procedurally, assuming they even want to do it at all.)
  3. Build it yourself without copying the code from the original crate. (Possibly without even reading the code, but now we're getting into a legal grey area.)

If the current maintainer doesn't respond, then (1) or (3) is your only option. And you'll need to publish it under a new crate name.

14 Likes

Ok. Thanks for the help!

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