You’ve found a project which interests you. It looks in fact like it might be incredibly useful. You start to play around with the code. You have some questions, find some bugs. You post queries and bug reports. Nothing happens. You find some more problems – some architectural issues for example, which result in queries you’d like answered. Still no reply. You even send in patches – still nothing. You like the idea of the project, just not the current implementation or the way its being run – so when do you make the decision to fork, or even re-implement it?
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magpiebrain 
4 Responses to “So at what point do you consider reimplementing an OS project?”
I think that you should contact the admin and ask for admin priviledges. If you get no response within a week then fork it.
As the author of several projects that I have not maintained (serviceTango.sf.net, jlense.sf.net, rswt.sf.net) I can tell you that I would be fine with turning over control of a project to someone that was interested in it. At least it gives the project a chance of moving forward. Some authors may rather have a project just sit out there like a permanent shrine. In that just you should not feel the slightest bit guilty about forking the project and moving on. Heck, that’s supposed to be one of the advantages of open source software.
That’s my opinion anyway…
ted stockwell
That argument works fine if the OS project is not being maintained, but what if it is – what if its become an opensource/closed development project? I think I can guess the answer though…
You may find this interesting:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/homesteading/
Now that is a handy link – thanks Matt.