PEP 541 Request: stockfish

[johndoknjas]

Project to be claimed

stockfish: https://pypi.org/project/stockfish

Your PyPI username

JohnDoknjas: https://pypi.org/user/JohnDoknjas

Reasons for the request

Hi, my name is John and I've worked on the Python Stockfish project since 2021. Last summer, the owner of the project (Ilya) stopped being active on GitHub, and we haven't heard from him since. A few months ago someone who knew him said that he had sadly passed away.

Myself and @kieferro would like to continue the project. We were the biggest contributors to the project after Ilya (https://github.com/zhelyabuzhsky/stockfish/graphs/contributors). Ilya had also made me a maintainer on PyPI, but I'd need ownership to transfer the github homepage to a fork we've made.

Maintenance or replacement?

Maintenance

Source code repositories URLs

Current code repo: https://github.com/zhelyabuzhsky/stockfish

Our intended new repo: https://github.com/py-stockfish/stockfish

Contact and additional research

For the currently open PRs (https://github.com/zhelyabuzhsky/stockfish/pulls), Ilya hasn't been active in any. The oldest open PR is one I created at the start of last August. Before that, Ilya had been active in PRs which are now closed - his response time was usually something like 1-3 days.

In the most recent comments to this PR (zhelyabuzhsky/stockfish#112), someone who knew Ilya informed us that he had passed away. Recently, Kieferro followed up with him via email, and further confirmed that this looks to be true. If needed, we could maybe forward the correspondence to moderators privately, if they're both fine with it.

Ilya's own contact info is listed on his profile: https://github.com/zhelyabuzhsky

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow the PSF Code of Conduct

[kieferro]

I support this request and I would like to add that I have also tried to contact Ilya via the email address provided in his profile, but have not received any response.

[johndoknjas]

Hi, just wanted to give an update for this. Since opening the issue, nothing of note has changed from what was mentioned. @kieferro and I are continuing to develop in our fork of the project.

[kieferro]

Hi, I would like to follow up on what the status is here and whether we still have to do something in order to lead this request, which has been open for some time now, to success.

Here is a breakdown of the important points according to PEP 541:

Reachability

Since I am convinced that Ilya (the previous maintainer) has indeed passed away (see also below), I'm assuming that the Package Index maintainers were also unable to reach him. This is also supported by the e-mail I wrote to him on 13 February 2023, to which I have still not received a reply.

Criteria for abandoned projects

• owner not reachable (See above)
• no releases within the past twelve months (The last release was 14 months ago, on 5 July 2022)
• no activity from the owner on the project's home page (The home page is the Github repo where Ilya last performed a publicly visible action on 10 July 2022, which is also the last action on his Github profile)

Criteria for the continuation of an abandoned project

• the project has been determined abandoned by the rules described above (See above)
• the candidate is able to demonstrate their own failed attempts to contact the existing owner (I have tried to reach Ilya and additionally emailed two of his former colleagues who have confirmed that he has passed away. I would not like to publish the e-mails here, but I can show them privately.)
• the candidate is able to demonstrate improvements made on the candidate's own fork of the project (Changes to 13 files with almost 1700 additions and 600 deletions have been made on the fork)
• the candidate is able to demonstrate why a fork under a different name is not an acceptable workaround (It is about the continuation of the project and the further use of the source code. In order to preserve as many dependencies as possible, a fork makes much less sense than just creating a new project).
• the maintainers of the Package Index don't have any additional reservations. (This is the only point where I don't know if it is fulfilled. So again the follow-up questions: are there any unresolved points or do we need to give more information? Or what is the overall status and when can we expect a decision?

[carlosgmartin]

@kieferro @johndoknjas Any luck with this?

Does the pip install instruction in your project's readme install the old version?

[johndoknjas]

@carlosgmartin Unfortunately not at the moment, still waiting for the request to be approved. Doing pip install will install the old version from July 2022.

[encukou]

I'd need ownership to transfer the github homepage to a fork we've made.

You need to publish a new release for that; the homepage is taken from the package metadata.
Still, if the current owner has passed away, we should give ownership to you. We do have to use the usual process to verify that they're really unreachable.

---

We are working to contact the owner to determine if they're reachable.

Disclaimer: We are providing support to the PyPI Administrators to validate
this request and make a recommendation on the outcome and actions to be
taken. Final determination will be made by the PyPI Administrators when our
process is complete.

[encukou]

We could not reach the owner, and we consider the project abandoned per
PEP 541.
We recommend that the PyPI Administrators assign JohnDoknjas as the new
owner of "stockfish".

[ewdurbin]

Owner role on stockfish Project granted to JohnDoknjas