Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
P is for Practical
 
PerlMonks  

Is it worth tracking down absent cpan owners?

by jfroebe (Parson)
on Aug 28, 2006 at 21:14 UTC ( [id://570049]=perlquestion: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

jfroebe has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

There are hundreds of cpan modules that the owner doesn't respond for one reason or another. When you find a really nifty module but you are unsure whether to to write a review or not because:

  • the author doesn't respond
  • no work has been done on the module for several years

Should we continue with the review knowing that the author has disappeared?

Case in point, I've been trying to contact the author of the Sybase::RepAgent and Sybase::TdsServer for several weeks with no response.

Is it even possible to take over the ownership of a module when the owner disappears? I mean, is there some policy to contact some high muckety-muck to:

  • determine if the owner has really gone away or just doesn't want to maintain it
  • take ownership if necessary

Jason L. Froebe

Team Sybase member

No one has seen what you have seen, and until that happens, we're all going to think that you're nuts. - Jack O'Neil, Stargate SG-1

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Is it worth tracking down absent cpan owners?
by GrandFather (Saint) on Aug 28, 2006 at 21:33 UTC
Re: Is it worth tracking down absent cpan owners?
by astaines (Curate) on Aug 28, 2006 at 23:33 UTC

    adamk recently wrote here, in answer to my similar question,

    "The modules@perl.org team (mainly Brian Foy, Andreas and myself) have been handling this for years."

    "Module takeover is handled on a case by case basis, with the general standard being 'A number of contact methods tried a number of times over a number of weeks'".

    -- Anthony Staines
      Indeed, I'd be one of those "high muckety-muck" you were mentioning (the PAUSE admins in this case).

      If various members of Team Sybase would like to systematically go through all the Sybase:: modules and take over maintenance of the ones that authors have gone AWOL for, we'd be more than happy for you to do so.

      As astaines mentioned, it is something of a case by case basis, but if you've gone to a reasonable effort (and not just random emails) over a period of time to contact the authors, then email modules@perl.org with the details and generally quite happy to hand over co-maintainer permissions (which can be trumped by the author if they return) to allow you to fix bugs and move the module along further.

      In this particular case, if you represent a semi-official group of Sybase professionals, then I'd expect there to be little if any questions asked as long as you've done a reasonable job trying to contact the authors.
Re: Is it worth tracking down absent cpan owners?
by shmem (Chancellor) on Aug 28, 2006 at 21:55 UTC
    Just to strengthen your point -
    determine if the owner has really gone away or just doesn't want to maintain it

    Yeah, there is the posibility that a module's author really has gone away beyond recall. Some years ago, a co-worker died leaving nothing but some encrypted disks... And even if they weren't - none of his relatives had interest or expertise to see whether there was anything valuable to the world on them.

    These are situations which should also be thought of. Well, by whom?

    --shmem

    _($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                                  /\_¯/(q    /
    ----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
    ");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}
Re: Is it worth tracking down absent cpan owners?
by jdtoronto (Prior) on Aug 28, 2006 at 23:48 UTC
    You are at least lucky that the modules are on CPAN. In the Win32 community we feel the loss of Amine Moulay Ramdane who wrote some exceptional modules for which the C/XS source code is not available. So all we need is for a Windows version to break the code and we have a real problem!

    My feeling is that once an author places code in the public arena, then if they don't want or aren't able to maintain it, then they should be happy to see what they started getting a continued lease on life.

    jdtoronto

Re: Is it worth tracking down absent cpan owners?
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Aug 28, 2006 at 23:01 UTC
    ... no work has been done on the module for several years...

    Some modules need no further work.

      Quoting Antoine de Saint-Exupery:
      Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher.
      [Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.]

      Flavio
      perl -ple'$_=reverse' <<<ti.xittelop@oivalf

      Don't fool yourself.
        Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

        The golfer's motto.

Re: Is it worth tracking down absent cpan owners?
by CountZero (Bishop) on Aug 29, 2006 at 12:08 UTC
    I would like to add a word of caution here, before you go out and for lack of answer from the author, take over the maintenance of these modules.

    First and foremost one has to look into the licence under which the module is published. The fact that you are allowed to use the modules for "free" does not necessarily mean that you may change them and re-publish them under the same name. Even "open source" licences can still reserve the copyright of the module. While derivative work is generally less of a problem (read: opening a new branch based upon a common basis), most of the time you cannot re-use the basename. There are a huge number of "open source" licences out there and each one is at least a little different from all others.

    The Artistic Licence is very clear that you cannot re-use the original name for your derivative work. The GPL is less clear in that respect, but IMO neither does it allow you to re-use the orignal name. Both of these licences apply to Sybase::RepAgent. For Sybase::TdsServer I could not find any licence, which is actually worse since it means full copyright rules would apply!

    CountZero

    "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law

      The namespaces that a particular distribution may use are not the "name" of the distribution.

      The name of the distribution would be something like Sybase-RegAgent-1.23

      Every upload to CPAN has a different name. Many contain overlapping implementations that wish to occupy the same namespace.

      What the CPAN indexer does, is establish a loose form of property rights for those namespaces.

      Thus, the indexer decides which distribution controls which namespaces at any given time.

      But "Sybase::RegAgent" is not the name of the actual Perl distribution.

        Thanks for the clarification, I was not aware of all the little details of the indexer.

        If I understand it correctly: the author decides on the name of the module (e.g. RegAgent) and he puts this under a namespace (e.g. Sybase) which is not his property (is it CPAN's?) and the indexer joins this all together and adds a version number.

        From a legal point of view it doesn't change much as you --depending on the kind of licence-- probably still are not allowed to "update/upgrade" the module and publish it under the same author-given name. If the only difference is the version number, it is probably not enough to sail clear of legal problems with ownership and copyright of the "name".

        CountZero

        "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law

A reply falls below the community's threshold of quality. You may see it by logging in.

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: perlquestion [id://570049]
Approved by GrandFather
Front-paged by Arunbear
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others having an uproarious good time at the Monastery: (4)
As of 2024-03-29 11:33 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found