This is ridiculous. Expecting the maintainer who hasn't contributed for over a year (hasn't given any life signs or shown any interest) to give admin rights to someone who genuinely cares about the project isn't entitlement. It's the absolute minimum he could do to keep the project alive at the expense of other peoples time and effort.
As such, there exists a kind of implied social contract between the project owner and users. The owner wants people to use the library[1] and improve it, and the users in turn want semi-frequent updates/fixes and to be informed about the status of the project. Projects that are regularly updated receive more users and contributors, who in turn help provide bug reports, improvement ideas and PRs.
Calling users "entitled" for asking the owners to adhere to the aforementioned social contract, which defines open-source and holds it together like glue, betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of what this ecosystem is and how it manages to be a legitimate alternative to commercial software.
[1]If the owner has other reasons for putting up the project on Github/Gitlab etc (e.g. it's their hobby project, or they want to showcase their code to potential employers), and has no intention to support it, then they should include a note in the readme that the code is not intended for production use. Problem solved.
No, there doesn't. The "reality" is this: you are using the code I have given out, and that's all you get from me.
I also very much enjoy how you talk about your own free time, and how it's not really "free" to evaluate this stuff, and thus there's a burden etc etc -- and then conveniently turn around immediately and say "but maintainers are required to give me their time, that's part of the social contract". What kind of bullshit is this? It's always the same shit -- time and money for me (I get to reap the rewards, shitpost on your bugtracker, and complain on my blog when you make me mad), none for thee (you're required to help me).
If you're so worried about your own time and your own cost savings -- go buy proprietary code. Or pay the maintainer. Then you can actually have a real contract without handwaving and appealing to non-existent "social contracts".
If you want to whine about taking on risk, maybe you should also bear the burdens of that, as well as the benefits. I'm sorry that's so unfair, but maybe it could teach you something.
> If the owner has other reasons for putting up the project on Github/Gitlab etc (e.g. it's their hobby project, or they want to showcase their code to potential employers), and has no intention to support it, then they should include a note in the readme that the code is not intended for production use. Problem solved.
So your answer is that we should always assume this "social contract" exists with every piece of code, and thus maintainers are obligated to slave away for us unless specified otherwise?
This entire post reeks of nonsense entitlement-justification. I do not owe you my free time because I posted a library on GitHub, though I may choose to give you my time. I am also free to rescind that offer at any time, and guess what -- I do not need your approval to do so (because, really, you are not that important). End of story.
It isn't the responsibility of the project owner to tell you that their project doesn't meet your needs. It is your responsibility to check how the project is run and choose whether or not to take on that risk.
People actually doing the work of evaluating the risks they are taking on is how open source actually does become a legitimate (sometimes safer) alternative to commercial software.
People not doing the work, taking on risk without doing their homework, and then whining when it bites them in the ass is, well, "the story of left-pad".
