Recently, I spotted Terence Eden's essay on The Peaceful Transfer of Power as it relates to open-source projects. And, make no mistake, this is a real problem.
An open source project generally starts with one person. From there, if it doesn't die on the vine, it may grow to a few contributors, then many. Once it gets big enough, often times it's too much for the original founder to handle, whereupon some form of committee-based leadership is required. In the largest cases, the project actually becomes its own nonprofit. Other times, it comes under the wing of an organization like GNU or the Apache Software Foundation.
Though the BDFL model is popular, it's also unstable. If your benevolent dictator gets hit by a bus, you're screwed. Likewise if that person loses interest, or gets in legal trouble, or gets caught in a time crunch due to a job, or family, or other things. Of course, as Eden suggests, that dictator may turn out to be not so benevolent after all...more of a vicious idiot king.
So, as a sole responsible maintainer for an open-source project, you have to know when to walk away (and know when to run). Eugen Rochko just showed everyone how it's done by stepping away from Mastodon in the way he did. Since he already had a nonprofit set up, this was relatively easy to do. For others who aren't that lucky, Sumana Harihareswana has an entire guide about whether, and when, to trust a new maintainer to take over from you. You have to be careful, though, as you could run into serious problems as a result of trusting someone too much when you don't really know them. The best thing, in some cases, might be to
To be honest, I've never considered what might happen to any of my projects; they're not anywhere near the point I'd have to be concerned. If I depart this vale of tears, I'm arranging to have someone around to control the rights to my IP, similar to how a writer might have a literary executor. Other than that, well, if my new project starts to gain any traction, we'll see what needs to happen.
(Not handing anything off yet! Just in case you were confused by the title.)