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Comment by jodrellblank | Hacker News Reader

Go on then, which part of my earlier post do you disagree with, specifically?

1. The difference between ‘abandoned’ and ‘maintained’ is that ‘maintained’ is bounded at the lower end to a greater-than-zero amount of maintenance work. Not a specific amount but necessarily >0. (Without that, “maintained” and “abandoned” become the same thing and that’s absurd).

2. “I am the maintainer” can be a voluntary statement, it’s not compelled (e.g. by a gun to the head).

3. The role of ‘maintainer’ is ‘doing that >0 amount of maintenance work’.

By the time we’re arguing how much maintenance, you’re agreeing with my position. In the case of your garden, if I saw it on fire I would think it reasonable to contact you about the fire given you are the gardener. I wouldn’t contact someone who was not the gardener.

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Oh, you asked me if I disagreed with your point about gardens.

That one is pretty obvious because community gardens that want to enforce a floor on amount of maintenance include that in rules that you have to agree to before they give you some of their space.

I checked the whole terms of service for GitHub and they don’t have anything about how much work I have to do on a repo once I publish it for it to stay mine.

If you’re asking me which of those statements I disagree with, 1 and 3.

Here: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...

> "You are responsible for keeping your Account secure."

That is a non-zero amount of work.

> "You may not use GitHub in violation of export control or sanctions laws of the United States or any other applicable jurisdiction"

That requires you to be aware of those laws and put a non-zero amount of work into complying with them.

> "You will promptly notify GitHub by contacting us through the GitHub Support portal if you become aware of any unauthorized use of, or access to, our Service through your Account,"

That is a commitment to do some work.

> "For contractual purposes, you (1) consent to receive communications from us in an electronic form via the email address you have submitted"

That is a commitment to have a working email server/account.

If you don't do these things at times which are required, Github may close your account and your repo will go with it.

> "If you’re asking me which of those statements I disagree with, 1 and 3."

And on what grounds do you disagree? That "I will do something" is not saying that you will do something, or that "letting something rot" counts as "maintaining it"?

Keeping your account secure is not the same as maintaining a project.

But it is a great example of the social contract!

If you fail to keep your account secure you lose your account.

If you don't maintain your project then someone forks it.

That's the only social contract.

I think we’ll have to let this comment tree rot.

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