Yes, if you ignore pull requests, it does mean you're doing a pretty bad job of maintaining the project.

But what's so wrong with that? Where does this entitlement mindset come from, where as soon as someone has posted code on github, they've signed a lifelong contract to maintain it responsibly?

There's nothing wrong with abandoning code. It's open source in the first place; it's not like you're making money on it.

Ignoring pull requests doesn't necessarily mean abandoning the code or leaving it unmaintained.

Just because something is distributed as free software doesn't make it a community-developed project. A developer is completely within their rights to refuse to accept any outside contributions to a project they manage.

The idea that open source requires you to accept community contributions is actually pretty dangerous for the concept. I've run into more than one developer who keeps their code closed just because they feel that open source comes with an obligation to run a 'bazaar'.

You're right, there's nothing wrong with abandoning code. That's not what the author is talking about and it's not what I'm talking about.

If you call yourself a maintainer and claim to accept pull requests and you don't, then you're a shitty maintainer and it's your fault. I'm arguing that you should follow through with what you say or stop saying it.

No, but on the other hand, it doesn't cost much to update the README and officially orphan the project and/or leave feedback to indicate that the project is up for adoption, as a courtesy to people who have spent time improving your work.

Github should have more project meta-data, rather than sifting through the README. For example, Production Status: experimental / alpha / it's complicated / production / paid support. Pull request status, standards, response time-frame and response time-frame history would be nice. Canonical URL could become a cross-VCS hosting standard that fixes the annoying "this project has moved" messages.

Simple configurations could change meta-data based on activity over time, or voting, or (?). Default settings like "Mark this repo Abandoned after 3 months without commits" would cleanup confusion for most small projects.

Sourceforge has that, because beyond being a collaboration platform it also had goals of being a software directory and distribution site.

Github seems to carefully avoid picking up features that position it as a directory or distributor, though.

Agreed, a "health status" for projects would be very beneficial, and probably not that hard to implement.

This is entitlement. Why do you feel entitled to something given to you for free?

If the project is truly open source, just fork it and maintain it yourself. If no one wants to do it, why lay the blame on the original author?

No, it's entitlement to think that your time is so much more valuable than other people's. So much so, that you think it's acceptable to waste their time and effort because you're too lazy to add 1 line of text to a README.

How am I wasting their time? Most pull requests are people fixing stuff they needed to work for themselves, then just trying to get it patched upstream. Since they needed to do it anyway, there's hardly any time wasted.

Making pull request for stuff that they didn't need is a waste of everyone's time, and totally on the submitter.