Case: package removed from CRAN, but not orphaned

Dear R-Devel subscriber,

I would like to raise a topic and ask for your advice, guidance.
Today on R-help an issue with a certain package popped up that has been removed from CRAN, because it failed the checks and/or the dependencies are not any longer available. The package maintainer has been alerted to this issue a couple of times and kindly asked to fix the code, such that it fullfills the CRAN requirements. However, neither a fix is applied, nor has the package been orphaned such that someone else could take over the ownership and rectify the package.
In principal, and if I am not mistaken, one could simply take the code, fix it and release it (the package is under GPL-2). However, I would consider this as a rather rude approach. Hence, my question would be, if the R Core team can take the initiative, to declare the package as being orphaned after a 'warning period' has been elapsed in which the current maintainer is kindly asked to fix his package. Would it be feasible to ask R Core to orphan a package?

Best,
Bernhard

ps: Incidentally, I am aware of the new 'orphaned package rules', in particular under the rubrique 'Possible reasons for orphanizing a package', point 2). In the case of the package in question, the maintainer does respond to emails, but either seems to lack action and/or has a different time scale and awareness of time.


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