>We have contacted freenode support. We see hope to regain access to the VoidLinux IRC Channels. IRC is an essential tool for communication of the core team.
what is github/freenode supposed to do in this case, allow a takeover? allowing takeovers opens up a can of worms whenever a project gets forked and both sides claims to be the "rightful" owner of the project.
You can argue that it's open and one should be okay with that kind of behavior. But, imagine if Linus lost complete control of Linux, repository, websites, mailing lists and the group and was pushed to the side. We wouldn't have Linux today as we know it.
You can fork if this happens to you. But, the team members who wanted the project could have forked. They only performed a takeover because they wanted power and all the spoils of the effort that went into building the group, website, the name, developers, the claim of being the original project, social connections and user base. They also wanted to erase me from the history of the project. I was wiped out of the AUTHORS file. They had control of the blog entries, its message and direction of the project. It is dirty, underhanded and I am sure I am not the only one who it has happened to.
If you want someone to volunteer their time, you'd better treat him well.
> They also wanted to erase me from the history of the project. I was wiped out of the AUTHORS file.
If your characterizations are accurate they defrauded your users as well and in a major way. Many of your users wouldn't wish to continue using your software if its leadership got changed in a deceitful manner. If I'm reading this correctly they were pushed essentially a fork they haven't agreed to. Care to name names in case some users on HN fell pray to this fraud and possibly provide proof that what you allege did occur?
> I was wiped out of the AUTHORS file.
INAL. If they wiped your name from license text then you may also have a strong case for copyright infringement as many licenses require attribution.
And just to be sure, I think most if not all of the contributors would be happy to hear back and know if everything is alright. The lead was a very central and active part of the community until over a year ago.
Forking the project would kill the original, all servers are payed for and maintained by currently active contributors. We can not simply pull the plug and ask users to switch, if we do this this has to happen over a long time period until we know there are not many users left and there is no significant amount of traffic on the repository mirrors.
Based on this, we've added access flags for those active contributors enabling them to administrate their channels on freenode, and reassured them that if there's anything else we can do to help, we'd be happy where we're able to.
For now, the Void Linux channels are back with active contributors and should be able to run as intended.
If there's an easy way for them to recover all the accounts, do that, but if it starts taking months, it's time to fork.
You said that the 10 active member have full write access. But the admin can revoke that access at any time. These 10 members do not own the repo whatever the current permissions they have. It is like appointing a CEO with all powers to a company. He can do anything but he still doesn't own it.
Github runs repos/orgs for many people, business and big co. Ownership shouldn't be taken lightly there.
Github is a rather different sort of entity...
Of course. The group has a reasonable case to ownership of the project, and no one else (specifically the awol user) is contesting the handover.
[edit]: I did not even realize this would be a contentious point to make. I see lot of what-aboutisms (and downvoting): but let's take this concrete example for the story we're reading:
(1) Does anyone want to contest that the parent posters are not owners of the project (with commit access, and regarded by the project's community as it's leaders).
(2) We're not talking transferring away a govt. provided identity here. It's the github/irc project handle so it's owners can use it given the prior owner is awol.
(3) I agree there may be scenarios where this may not be as cut and dried, which is why i specifically mentioned ownership of a project, and no contention.
Sounds fairly benign. Ownership transfers happen all across the web with, to give a few examples, subreddits, social media handles, messaging groups, etc. Why can't Github do the same?
Edit: GH could also be in for liability claims should the original owner re-appear (at least in general, if not this particular case), and would need to check identity of the involved parties and whatnot, which is going to be very costly.
Nobody is giving away the current org - github would just be vacating the old name so somebody else can have it.
This is bound to become a bigger issue in the future as more and more names get used then fall into disuse.
The lesson is again why it it so important for any organization or project to have a continuity plan and not to have any one person as a gatekeeper.
"Account names may not be inactively held for future use. (...) Inactive accounts may be renamed or removed by GitHub staff at their discretion."
Brilliant.
You don't really own part or any of the project if you don't have administrative access to it. It's that simple. If you feel like you should, then you need to arrange that with the person who currently does.
These are project organizational issues that GitHub shouldn't be expected to waste their time on.
The organization on GitHub was registered by an individual on behalf of the open source project. Now that the person can no longer be contacted, control needs to be transferred to someone else representing the open source project. It's that simple.
While I agree with that logic on some level, this sounds exactly like the same arguments that every tech company uses to detach itself from the social consequences of the service it provides.
The expectation that you must always be reachable is toxic and one of the reasons I burned out of checking my email more than a couple times per month.
1. Github rename Void Linux to Void2 Linux as per above policy.
2. Register Void Linux to existing team.
3. Fork Void2 Linux as Void Linux.
Problem solved.
Forking is the only allowable option if the owner does not respond. Being able to take over a project's organization and official repo can be easily abused.
There is nothing to take over, it would just be nice to not have to move the repository and notify the 700+ github forks of our repository to change the upstream.
Serious question, from the perspective of the providers: is death a valid reason to transfer control of someone else's intellectual property? Legally, wouldn't that be the property of the person's estate?
The only potential problem is if the account has any private repositories, but GH could archive and/or delete those beforehand.
Having copyright over the code means being able to provide copies under a license of their choice. They still wouldn't be able to do that: relicensing the code would be illegal. They could only use it under the same license they already had.
The Github account is not IP, it's just a property of Github's system, and it belongs to them (GH), not to the copyright holder.
Luckily, one of our group of friends worked for GitHub and helped facilitate the transfer. Not sure how we would have done it otherwise.