After reading Why I'm Frequently Absent from Open Source by James Long and listening the corresponding The Changelog episode, I dwelt on the idea and believe that open source maintainers...
- ... should never be ashamed if they don't have time for a project.
- ... should be honest with themselves and open with their users so that everybody can be on the same page
- ... are people and they have at one time or another responsibilities or hardships that they need to attend to which reasonably take them away from a project
- ... may also reasonbly decide that they don't like the direction of a project or that they would like to explore other things and may leave a project permanently.
Along this line of thinking I've created a set of descriptions for different levels at which a project might be maintained. A maintainer can use these to announce to their users the current ability that they have to dedicate to a pr