In 2015, a phabricator task [0] and RfC discussion on meta [1] were started to create a process for determining when a tool has been abandoned by it's original maintainer(s) and how to hand control of the tool over to interested volunteers. The process stalled out without resolution.

Our on-wiki communities are still highly dependent on volunteer developed tools and vulnerable to disruption when the original developers move on. I have drafted two straw dog [2] policies that attempt to define fair and workable solutions to the general problem. The proposals take two different but compatible approaches to solving the problem of abandonment. The Tool Labs developer community could choose to adopt either or both policies as protection for the communities that they serve.

The first policy describes a *right to fork* for all Tool Labs hosted software. This policy clarifies the existing Tool Labs Open Source and Open Data requirements and defines a process for requesting access to code and data that are not already published publicly.

The second policy is a more aggressive *abandoned tool policy* that describes a process for adding new maintainers to a tool account (adoption) with a future possibility of removing the original maintainers (usurpation). This policy is based primarily on the discussions that happened on Meta in 2015.

Both policies propose creating a new committee of volunteers to evaluate requests and perform cleanup of sensitive data in the tool before providing the source code or direct access to the tool account. This provision is key actually implementing both proposals. Paid administration and management does not scale any better than paid editing. To continue to grow and thrive, the Tool Labs developer community needs to become more active in enforcing and expanding their own policies. Membership in the committees would require signing the Wikimedia Foundation's Volunteer NDA [3] to ensure that sensitive data is handled appropriately. If both polices are adopted the two committees should be collapsed into a single group with authority to handle both types of requests.

The straw dog policies are posted on Wikitech: * https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Tool_Labs/Right_to_fork_policy * https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Tool_Labs/Abandoned_tool_policy

Discussion of the particulars of each proposal should happen on their associated talk pages. As an example it would be appropriate to debate whether the 14 day non-functional waiting period is too short or too long on the Abandoned tool policy talk page. Discussion of the process in general can happen on Meta [1].

I would like discussion to remain open through *2016-10-12* (3 weeks from date of posting). Following the discussion period I hope to call for an approval vote of some sort to make the policies official. Wikitech and Tool Labs do not currently have well defined policies for establishing consensus, but I'm sure we can collectively come up with something reasonable.

[0]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T87730 [1]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Abandoned_Labs_tools [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man_proposal [3]: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_NDA

Bryan