If you like it, put your name in MAINTAINERS

If the FLOSS project you like seems unmaintained, nominate yourself. The only hard requirements are time and will to do the work. Skill is, in my opinion, a secondary concern; there’s probably a lot you don’t know, but I assure you there’d be plenty of chances to learn.

This is apropos to LightDM being effectively unmaintained a few years back (via LWN):

I had hoped that someone might come forward who wanted to maintain it but I haven’t seen any interest (though I have also not actively tried to encourage this).

I’ve been on the other side of that: a curious user looking in on a project whose issue tracker is gradually overrun with weeds. A few times, I asked if I can be a co-maintainer. It always went well, in my opinion anyway.

The best case was when the maintainer was not yet burned out, so they stuck around while I took up some of the work. I later stepped back from that project, but I was smart enough to announce that and call for more maintainers. Another contributor stepped up and continues the work.

A slightly worse case was when the maintainer already moved on, so their presence was spotty and then tapered off. I had to fork the project in order to make releases. It all worked out, but to me it highlights the importance of stepping up as soon as possible.

A couple neutral cases was when I took up a project, worked on it for a while, but lost interest. All of those are now collecting dust. As far as I can tell, no harm was done, since none of those projects seem to be used by anyone. Previous maintainers never contacted me to get the projects back either.

Given Jia Tan and other similar stories, maintainers might be reluctant to give commit bits right away. If you’re in for the long haul, it shouldn’t matter. Your help will let maintainers relax a bit, increasing their chance of staying around and helping you. Then everyone benefits.