Open Ownership Pledge

Introduction

The Open Ownership Pledge stimulates involvement of new developers in a project by the current maintainer's promise that:

Issues are reviewed as quickly as is reasonable
Changes done to the project are committed with attribution, therefore showing on the profile page of the author
Commitment for any issue tagged with the Open Ownership Pledge leads to be maintainer
Commitment for all project issues tagged Open Ownership Pledge leads to be the new project owner

It stimulates project owners to handover ownership by:

Being able to indicate issues to be solved first to either boost development or test the capabilities of a potential new owner
Providing some rules in the form of an oath by the new owner to guarantee good maintainership and continued development also after passing ownership

How to apply as project owner or maintainer on a pledged project

Work on all the unresolved project issues tagged Open Ownership Pledge to be the new project owner, or any project issues tagged Open Ownership Pledge to be maintainer. Assign issues to yourself to show others you are working on them. (Un-assign them when you become inactive in those issues.) Once done add a comment, for example:

As project ownerAs maintainer

I want to be project owner; I promise to abide to the conditions of the Open Ownership Pledge as described. I have worked on all of the corresponding issues.

I offer to be maintainer; I promise to abide to the conditions of the Open Ownership Pledge as described. I have worked on one of the corresponding issues.

Oath by the current owner

The current project current owner promises:

To transfer ownership to anyone that solves all issues tagged Open Ownership Pledge
To make anyone solving one of those issues maintainer
The ownership does not pass to someone that does not have a proven track record related to the module solving relative complex issues

Oath by the new project owner

The new project current owner promises:

To not remove any existing project maintainer (including the previous project owner) and leave all their permissions as they are
To keep the note stating the original author, if present
To keep the previous Supporting organizations, if present
To transfer ownership back to the previous owner or by reopening the issue for an ownership change, if it is no longer possible to dedicate the necessary time to maintain the project
To perform good maintainership

What is good maintainership?

Reviewing in timely manner any issues that needs to be reviewed
Committing the supplied merge requests, with attribution to the initial author, after they are reviewed and marked as ready to be committed
Creating a new stable version on a regular basis if code was changed and providing a list of related issues in the release notes
Keeping the project page and the project documentation updated
Following Working on a project with more than one maintainer

After an ownership change

The Open Ownership Pledge still applies but should not be right away open for another ownership change.

Remove the notice on the project page (introduced with point #3 in the last section)
Set the status of the Seeking new maintainer issue to Fixed
Verify all the issues tagged Open Ownership Pledge have their status set to Fixed
Edit the project page and set the Maintenance status field back from Seeking new maintainer to Actively maintained

Reopen for an ownership change

By the current ownerBy maintainers

When there are enough new complex issues and the current owner is no longer able to give the project enough "love" or just wants to hand the baton to someone capable, the previous owners can be contacted with a request to take over instead of opening for a new ownership change to someone new.

If it appears development or maintenance has stalled for a substantial period and the current owner does not have objections or does not respond within two weeks on a proposal to reactivate this issue to seek a new maintainer.

Steps

Select a series of unresolved relatively complex issues in the queue and tag them with Open Ownership Pledge.
Set the status of the project issue Seeking new maintainer to Active.
Restore the notice on the project page.

How to add the pledge to your own project

Open a new project issue using Seeking new maintainer as title.
Select a series of unresolved relatively complex issues in the queue and tag them with the Open Ownership Pledge and set them with as parent page the issue you created titled Seeking new maintainer.
Put a notice on the project page linking the created issue. (Replace <issue-link> with the issue link.)

 This project can be taken over under the Open Ownership Pledge. Solve all the child issues of <issue-link>.

4. Edit the project page and set the Maintenance status field to Seeking new maintainer.