[bitcoin-dev] Absent authors and BIP updates

[Karl-Johan Alm <karljohan-alm@garage.co.jp>]

Hello,

People come in as Bitcoin developers all the time, but sometimes
people also leave permanently. In the case of BIP authors, when a user
leaves and does not respond to (reasonable) requests to change their
BIPs, we are sort of stuck right now.

BIP-2 states that anyone is allowed to request a change of a
draft/proposed BIP to "rejected" status after 3 years of inactivity,
but sometimes BIPs are accepted, after which the author leaves.

See e.g. https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/339

There are a couple of ways to address this:

1. We allow anyone to request a change of a draft/proposed BIP to
"accepted", at any time. It is upon the requester to prove within
reason that the BIP does fulfill the criteria as given in BIP-2. Such
a request does not need the approval of the BIP author.

2. We allow BIPs to expire after 3 years, and allow the BIP repository
maintainer to assign a new champion, once/if such a champion appeared.

3. We do neither, and when such is warranted, we make new BIPs with
new assignations which supercede the old BIP, sort of like how BIP 2
supercedes BIP 1. Without the author to sign off on the change though,
it may not be obvious enough since we can't modify the original BIP.

4. Other approach / fine as it is.