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A person who has submitted some pr fixes and shows an understanding of the software stands a good chance.

Usually it is the guy who forks the original, and gets burried beneath patches?

You should definitely send a message to the gedit mailing list mailing declaring your desire to take over maintainership. If nobody replies send to a more general Gnome list.

I'd actually be interested to read a public reply to a potential maintainer for one of their unmaintained projects.

Mostly, a history of sending patches.