perlmeditation markjugg <p> This is a public reponse to Ovid's <a href="http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.perl.modules.authors/1215">Give up your Modules!</a> post to the Perl module author's list. Several encouraged me to follow up here as well. <p> I agree with Ovid is that there is a brewing problem with under-maintained modules on CPAN. <p> Here's my talk, which I walk: Consider yourself an owner of module you use, being considerate that others may feel the same way, especially the current maintainers. <p> Leave patches in RT. Follow-up on the other bug reports until you reach a resolution with the bug submitter. Ask other bug posters to submit their own patches. If you can't officially close the bug in RT, leave a note that says "I recommend this issue be resolved because..." <p> Go ahead and prepare a next proposed release with tests/docs/code and ChangeLog updates and tell the author they can simply sign-off on it. If they don't respond or agree, you can still release it yourself. <p> Remember, open source licenses give you equal rights to do these things. <p> I now help maintain Data::FormValidator, CGI::Session, CGI::Application, and WWW::Mechanize, none of which I wrote. In these cases, acting helpful and cooperative has been successful. The existing maintainers have been appreciative of my pro-active approach. Further, I have been successful in sharing the burden of maintainership by encouraging other users to make complete code/doc/test contributions themselves. <p> <p>Yes, it may work best if some module authors give up some of their modules. By acting like a maintainer yourself, you become a logical choice to pass the responsibility on to. Step up. </p> <p>(If you want a place to start, you could help with the <a href="http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=WWW-Mechanize">100 bug reports filed against WWW::Mechanize</a>!)</p> <!-- Node text goes above. Div tags should contain sig only --> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-20513"> <P> [markjugg|Mark Stosberg] </div></div>