Stepping back comfortably

Even with the best transition plan done, it’s hard to “cold turkey” step back from a project. Stepping back is a gradual process, where the new maintainers and leaders can take over the activities while reducing their dependencies on the maintainers they plan to replace. Many maintainers tend to err on the side of caution when stepping back; after all, they put lots of energy and passion into the project and want to be certain that it will be in good hands (not always, of course; some maintainers might be so burnt out by the project that they are just thrilled to find someone to take it off their hands… hehe).

Presuming a maintainer wants to ensure a smooth transition, there are a few things they should do. We’ll look at them in the upcoming subsections.

Being appropriately available

The most important thing is to ensure their previous maintainers don’t completely disappear. But this has to be done with caution...