(If this file is included in a project, you can find the list of current caretakers at the bottom.)
In a small classical open-source project, maintainers do a lot, and if maintainers don't have time to do a lot, usually the project stalls. Finding new maintainers is hard because few people actively want to take over all the responsibilities of a project. There must be a different way.
With Caretaker Maintainership, “Maintainers” become “Caretakers”. Caretakers' only mandatory responsibility is to grant Releasers commit and publish access to the project. Caretakers can of course still do other things as they wish.
Releasers are one of three kinds of contributors to a Caretaker project:
You can of course have multiple roles. A single-person project will have that person do all or almost all roles. You're also not restricted to just these roles, or to follow them precisely. Do whatever fits best!
Someone who wishes to be a Releaser must open an issue or contact the Caretakers in some other way and ask, detailing what they want to do. That can be as limited as “merge this feature” or as open-ended as “work on the project during my free time”.
Caretaker maintainership is not suitable for commercial, high-stakes, or security projects!
Also you may want to use one of the badges below on your readme and/or add the #caretaker tag to your github description so: