"Account names may not be inactively held for future use. (...) Inactive accounts may be renamed or removed by GitHub staff at their discretion."
Sounds fairly benign. Ownership transfers happen all across the web with, to give a few examples, subreddits, social media handles, messaging groups, etc. Why can't Github do the same?
Nobody is giving away the current org - github would just be vacating the old name so somebody else can have it.
This is bound to become a bigger issue in the future as more and more names get used then fall into disuse.
Edit: GH could also be in for liability claims should the original owner re-appear (at least in general, if not this particular case), and would need to check identity of the involved parties and whatnot, which is going to be very costly.
The lesson is again why it it so important for any organization or project to have a continuity plan and not to have any one person as a gatekeeper.
Forking is the only allowable option if the owner does not respond. Being able to take over a project's organization and official repo can be easily abused.
There is nothing to take over, it would just be nice to not have to move the repository and notify the 700+ github forks of our repository to change the upstream.
The expectation that you must always be reachable is toxic and one of the reasons I burned out of checking my email more than a couple times per month.
1. Github rename Void Linux to Void2 Linux as per above policy.
2. Register Void Linux to existing team.
3. Fork Void2 Linux as Void Linux.
Problem solved.
Brilliant.
You don't really own part or any of the project if you don't have administrative access to it. It's that simple. If you feel like you should, then you need to arrange that with the person who currently does.
These are project organizational issues that GitHub shouldn't be expected to waste their time on.
While I agree with that logic on some level, this sounds exactly like the same arguments that every tech company uses to detach itself from the social consequences of the service it provides.
The organization on GitHub was registered by an individual on behalf of the open source project. Now that the person can no longer be contacted, control needs to be transferred to someone else representing the open source project. It's that simple.
Of course. The group has a reasonable case to ownership of the project, and no one else (specifically the awol user) is contesting the handover.
[edit]: I did not even realize this would be a contentious point to make. I see lot of what-aboutisms (and downvoting): but let's take this concrete example for the story we're reading:
(1) Does anyone want to contest that the parent posters are not owners of the project (with commit access, and regarded by the project's community as it's leaders).
(2) We're not talking transferring away a govt. provided identity here. It's the github/irc project handle so it's owners can use it given the prior owner is awol.
(3) I agree there may be scenarios where this may not be as cut and dried, which is why i specifically mentioned ownership of a project, and no contention.