We need to clarify whether "three consecutive timeouts" refers to "three consecutive timeouts of one port" or "three consecutive timeouts in any port owned by this maintainer."

I'd suggest maybe making this change:

If the maintainer does not respond within three months, or if there have been three consecutive timeouts, then that maintainer is considered absent without leave, and can be replaced as the maintainer of the particular port in question.

If the maintainer has made no commits during the above-mentioned three-month or three consecutive timeout period, then all ports owned by that maintainer can be assigned back to the pool.

I left it vague on purpose, so that we can decide to exercise our own judgment when resetting someone's maintainership.

Mmmm, and I am not sure "made no commit" is right, not everyone is a committer :-)

That's a very good point. Perhaps "made no contributions (commits, submissions, or PR comments)" instead.

Taking all of somebody's ports is a pretty hefty response, and I'd just for it not to be the automatic response to timeouts.

If your goal was to have it be a personal decision, then it should say so. "... then that maintainer is considered absent without leave, and can be replaced as maintainer of the particular port in question. If the maintainer appears to have abandoned FreeBSD ports entirely, all ports maintained by that person may be assigned back to the pool."

I don't know, I prefer to keep things as simple as possible, I thought the way I changed it was nice and simple that way.

Also, what you wrote could be understood as "if you don't do anything for 3 months even if there is nothing to do, we will reset your maintainership" :-)

I'll have to think about it a bit more.

True, but the new text removes resetting maintainership on a single port entirely. Now, if ANY port times out, it calls for ALL ports to be reset.

In D15776#333555, @adamw wrote:

True, but the new text removes resetting maintainership on a single port entirely. Now, if ANY port times out, it calls for ALL ports to be reset.

Well, it was the idea, if someone is gone and not interested any more, no point in keeping them as dead maintainers.

Anyone can submit a PR with a patch changing the maintainer of a port, and that patch can be committed after a single timeout.

In D15776#333672, @mat wrote:

Well, it was the idea, if someone is gone and not interested any more, no point in keeping them as dead maintainers.

Anyone can submit a PR with a patch changing the maintainer of a port, and that patch can be committed after a single timeout.

You know, you're completely right. There's still individual timeouts, but an absentee maintainer is simply an absentee maintainer---there's no point to have gradations.

I'm on board with this, but please change "all his" to "all of his or her" in line 4081.

In D15776#333757, @adamw wrote:

In D15776#333672, @mat wrote:

Well, it was the idea, if someone is gone and not interested any more, no point in keeping them as dead maintainers.

Anyone can submit a PR with a patch changing the maintainer of a port, and that patch can be committed after a single timeout.

You know, you're completely right. There's still individual timeouts, but an absentee maintainer is simply an absentee maintainer---there's no point to have gradations.

I'm on board with this, but please change "all his" to "all of his or her" in line 4081.

Oh, I had written "their" in a previous incantation, don't know why it became his again.

"Their" in a singular context is pretty awkward grammar. "His or her" is the correct phrase, but you could avoid it entirely with "all ports maintained by that [person/address/individual]" or "all of that maintainer's ports."

If it remains "their", "all their" needs to become "all of their".

In D15776#333780, @adamw wrote:

"Their" in a singular context is pretty awkward grammar. "His or her" is the correct phrase, but you could avoid it entirely with "all ports maintained by that [person/address/individual]" or "all of that maintainer's ports."

If it remains "their", "all their" needs to become "all of their".

I thought their was the pronoun to use when talking about a person of unspecified gender.

It's a slang usage, but it's common enough that everybody treats it as a respectful gender-neutral term.

Technically, "their" is only for plural cases, and "his or her" is the proper singular gender-neutral phrase. If this were a more formal document, I'd push harder for "his or her," but it's probably more important that it be comfortable English rather than pedantically correct English.