R announce - Jul 2003 - CRAN package orphanizing process

As the list of packages on CRAN becomes longer almost on a weekly
basis, we need a formal mechanism to handle the case when somebody
wants to resign from maintaining a package.


Possible reasons for orphanizing a package:

1) The current maintainer actively wants to orphanize the package,
   e.g., because he has no longer the time or interest to act as
   package maintainer.

2) The current maintainer does not answer to emails by the CRAN admins
   for longer periods of time.


The orphanizing process:

1) The package gets the special keyword "ORPHANED" as maintainer in
   the DESCRIPTION file, the patch level of the version number is
   increased.

2) The package is moved from $CRAN/src/contrib to
   $CRAN/src/contrin/Orphaned.

3) As long as the package passes "R CMD check" for the current release
   version of R, it additionally remains in $CRAN/src/contrib/.


Everybody is more than welcome to take over as maintainer of an
orphaned package. Simply download the package sources, make changes if
necessary (respecting original author and license!) and resubmit the
package to CRAN with your name as maintainer in the DESCRIPTION file
of the package.

For the CRAN admins,
Fritz Leisch

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