[TYPO3-english] Outdated / abandoned extensions in TER

Xavier Perseguers xavier at typo3.org
Tue Mar 4 11:42:19 CET 2014


Dear TYPO3 users and developers,

This post is to gather some feedback from the community.

As you know, the TYPO3 extension repository (TER) contains many outdated 
or abandoned extensions. Marking them as such is long running task (not 
technically complicated but that's another story).

Now, from time to time (I just did it this morning with EXT:lz_links) 
someone picks up an abandoned extension (last update in 2004, no bug 
tracker, no public repository, it did not really exist back then), fork 
it on GitHub, fix it and then tweet about it.

This is great for users being aware of it but this is not a good 
solution, naturally.

Now, it is known that in case of abandoned extensions, someone can try 
to contact the author to get the extension key being transfer and become 
a new maintainer. If there is no answer for some time, the ECT 
(Extension Coordination Team), with dedicated mailing list and project 
on Forge, has the privilege to actually transfer the extension key.

However, this is often not really wished to become the new maintainer 
when you were just sponsored (or did it for fun) to "fix it". At the 
same time, the open-source spirit would be to publish it so that others 
may benefit from your work and the TER is the place to put it back.

Transferring an abandoned extension to the Core account is not desired, 
as the active contributor team does not have the resources to maintain 
all those extensions.

What would you think of setting up an account as owner for abandoned 
stuff? If someone has an update, we could have some simple reviews on a 
mailing list and then a new version could be uploaded as a service to 
the public with no responsibility to maintain it further.

This would have the nice side effect of clearly showing the abandoned 
state in TER while allowing someone/some group to pick it up and take 
care of it again.

What do you think?

-- 
Xavier Perseguers
TYPO3 CMS Team Member

TYPO3 .... inspiring people to share!
Get involved: http://typo3.org



More information about the TYPO3-english mailing list