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Comment by anilgulecha | Hacker News Reader

> what is github/freenode supposed to do in this case, allow a takeover?

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.

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I hope you're kidding. GitHub has no legal basis for transferring ownership, and it would be a publicity fiasco if they did. A "reasonable case to ownership" at best would allow to bring the case to court.

"Github transfers organizational ownership after owner becomes inactive"

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?

IANAL, but apart from a private entity having such power being problematic (to say the least) who's going to put stuff on GitHub if it can be gamed to take away your control?

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.

What's with all the legal bluster in your comments here? Not only do the liabilities you're trying to conjure up not exist, but this is not even the first occurrence of something like this happening with GitHub. They have a documented policy for freeing up inactive names. (Spoiler alert: it's allowed, and they've done it.)

Or alternatively, github could rename this org since the owner is no longer in contact and then let the currently active group have the name.

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.

I would agree, even in the case of a documented death, the heirs/estate would be the one to decide a transfer of ownership and to whom.

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.

They don't need legal basis, it's their platform. You don't "own" an account. Plus, they do warn you:

"Account names may not be inactively held for future use. (...) Inactive accounts may be renamed or removed by GitHub staff at their discretion."

https://help.github.com/articles/name-squatting-policy/

so you can take over a project simply because the real owner is away?

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.

The development is still continuing, there are 10+ contributors with write access to all repositories in the organization. The only missing bit is permissions to change/add new team members to the organization.

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.

I do not see the danger of abuse. This is not about a takeover by someone entirely unrelated to the organization and repositories. This is about transferring ownership of an established open source organization to those who already have write-access to all repositories and are in fact now running the project. This seems fair when the original owner can no longer be contacted for months. Why should the organization be forced to fork because of this?

"Of course" is jumping the gun here

Getting your projects transferred away because you can't (or choose not to) answer emails for a period of time is hostile.

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.

Then you shouldn't use GH: https://help.github.com/articles/name-squatting-policy/

How is that related? You can easily be active on a GitHub account and still check your email infrequently.

Fair enough, though always_good is replying to a situation where the user is neither.

But that's a policy on name-squatting. Something that doesn't apply here. The creator isn't squatting on the name they created and I would be surprised if Github would commute the name at their discretion unless considerable time passed, something I don't necessarily have a problem with on a long enough time scale. Though there there's a point on that time scale where I'd expect the new owners to just consider a new name.

> Inactive accounts may be renamed or removed by GitHub staff at their discretion.

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.

Good policy. Then I can just watch for people to go on vacation via their Instagram, and while they're out I'll contact GitHub and say "Hey this person is unreachable! Give me control of their projects!"

Brilliant.

I think that what anilgulecha meant by ownership is that there are probably quite a few committers. So they are not just some random people taken from the street. It's not so clear cut, but there is something to it. It would not be good for your contributors to take the carpet from under your feet, but at the same time part of the project already belongs to them.

Those details don't really matter, because the point it's not realistic to expect a company with so many projects and users like GitHub to be making those kind of individual calls.

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.

Especially because they have so many projects and users they are expected to make individual calls. GitHub is the home for many open source projects and should care for the needs of their community.

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.

> it's not realistic to expect a company with so many projects and users like GitHub to be making those kind of individual calls

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.

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