Transfer ownership of PyPI packages

Question

As per PEP-541 abandoned PyPI projects can now be claimed. Has anyone done this? Who to contact? I tried the dist utils mail list as well as filing a ticket in the support forum, but no response so far. How does one actually request transfer of ownership in practice as outlined in PEP-541?

Kaye

Looks like it takes about 2 years to have a PyPI project name claim request resolved. – Eduction

Interesting. How did you come up with that number? Back in 2015 some cases were resolved within 2 months... – Kaye

You are right, my statement is incorrect. The link in my previous comment points to the 2nd page in the query result, demonstrating (if you also look at the first page) that all such requests dating back to Feburary of 2016 are still in status "open". Probably the process of considering such requests slowed down or was suspended in the beginning of 2016. – Eduction

Yeah. 😑 Wonder how to get it rolling again...? 🤔 – Kaye

Answer 1

Update: PEP 541 has been approved on 2018-03-23. There is additional work to be done before you could request an ownership transfer, however.

My original answer follows.

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The PEP is in draft stage. As such it is not official policy and requests are not likely to be honoured.

If the PEP ever moves to the accepted stage, the terms of service would need to be updated to reflect the new policy. And it may well be that packages that were uploaded before this point in time to be grandfathered in; they were uploaded under the old terms after all. All in all, it'll be some time before packages that are abandoned today can be claimed.

What is in place today is an ad-hoc process, executed without any real mandate or support in the terms of service, based more on common sense than on actual legal standing. There is no telling how long a request will take or what your chances are.

For some background, you can read this thread from 2014 that appears to be the first serious call for a formal process; it was kicked off after a request for control of the django-registration package back-fired with the original maintainer removing a newly-added maintainer. The whole issue came back up again in January 2017, which led to the first draft of PEP 541 (Donald is Donald Stufft, the current maintainer of PyPI).

Athenian

I missed that little detail... it still seems strange though, as these types of issues where resolved just two years ago, with our without the paperwork in place. – Kaye

@vidstige: it depends entirely on the good will of volunteers, a bit of common sense and luck, I guess. – Athenian

The PyPI admins got cold feet after they transferred ownership of a package and then the original owner came back and objected. Since then I don't think you have any chances of an ownership transfer without the explicit consent of the original owner -- at least until this PEP is accepted. – Lugo

@MariusGedminas thanks for the insight. I figured something along these lines had happened. Do you know what package that was? It makes sense. Hoping for the PEP to be approved shortly then. I've contacted the Director of Operations (was python community always this hierarchal?) in hopes of at least getting more transparency in administrative work of the important PyPI. – Kaye

@MariusGedminas: my sense is more that since Donald Stufft took over as maintainer that he is relying on community process to work out conflicts and ownership claims. At any rate, the PEP written at his request, after this thread sparked interest in creating one. – Athenian

@vidstige: I've asked Lukasz (PEP author) about the status directly, he's a colleague of mine. – Athenian

There was a big thread on distutils-sig a few years back. I think the package was django-something. I can't find the thread :( – Lugo

@MariusGedminas: ah, I think I found it: django-registration. PyDanny kicked off a lets have a process thread back in 2014 that references it: mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2014-September/… – Athenian

@MariusGedminas: and the relevant ticket: sourceforge.net/p/pypi/support-requests/407. The old owner still had control, and didn't consent to the new owner being added (they just silently removed them again). – Athenian

@MartijnPieters any news from Lukasz? – Kaye

@vidstige: basically, the ball is in Donald Stufft's court, as designated BDFL delegate. I've pinged him on Twitter but have not yet received a reply. Also see the PEP Review & Resolution section of PEP 1. – Athenian

@MartijnPieters alright, at least I've tracked down what's the holdup now. :-) As for my pending requests I'll just grab another other name that's harder to find. :-( Anyway, thanks for all the help. Take the well-earned bounty. – Kaye

Looks like PEP 541 was recently accepted – Machutte

@BrendanAbel: interesting! The terms of use have not yet seen the required update however. – Athenian

That's greta news! :-) – Kaye

@sorin: there is as of yet no official process, and until the team confirms that filing a ticket in the Warehouse GitHub project is officially sanctioned, I'm not going to link there from this post. Note that the Warehouse team don't even have the functionality implemented for authorised PEP 541 ownership changes on PyPI. – Athenian

@MartijnPieters do you know of any updates on this matter? Almost a year has passed already. – Fluky

@Fluky the ticket linked at the top of my answer is the official source of any updates. I have no other insights into where this is at. – Athenian

Answer 2

It seems now things are moving forward in a smoother way. The way to go right now seems to be to add an issue over at GitHub. See my specific transfer request over here.

Kaye