Not really, because you well might be open to contributions and merge them sometimes and maybe even fix some bug reports yourself, but you don't have to and if I'm contributing a pull-request for your project it doesn't mean that you are obligated (in any sense of the word) to merge it or take any actions on it whatsoever. If I'm making a pull request I must be prepared for it, because nobody promised me it would be otherwise.
I shouldn't waste my time making a PR if someone is going to ignore it. Really, there should also be a way of someone marking a project as "needing a maintainer" so that someone that is very interested in a project succeeding can take it over and its work can continue (including the previously unmerged PRs).
The best thing about being free of obligations is that it works both ways: you don't have to "waste your time" on making pull-requests if you don't feel like doing it. As well as author of the project doesn't have to accept it or do whatever you'd like him to do. Thinking otherwise is completely unreasonable and will only hurt yourself. Because, one more time: you cannot demand anything from somebody whom you are not paying for his work. More than that: author of the project might be maintaining it very actively, but still won't accept your pull requests. Why? Because he doesn't think that functionality you added is necessary or appropriate in his project. Or maybe your code is just messy. Or he isn't sure that suggested change doesn't open new bugs or security/performance issues. Or whatever reason it is, it's his right to decide if he wants to accept/answer/read it or not. He might even accept every single pull request out there except yours. It's his right. And your right is to decide if you are fine with it or not and if you are ready to "waste your time" on contributing or not. And for every button you'd like to be on the project menu, there is one universal button: "Fork project".
Some maintainers have abandoned projects and aren't going to merge a single character typo-fix. Why? Because of whatever reason they want. I never said that they have to accept it. I never said I was "demanding" shit from them. Furthermore if an author is actively maintaining it, then they should respond in a civil way to every pull request, even if it is a "decline to merge" response.
Again, what I said wasn't that I shouldn't waste my time putting together a pull request if it isn't going to be accepted. Just that I shouldn't waste my time making a pull request if it is going to be ignored. It isn't too much to expect someone to at least say "Hey, sorry I'm not writing PHP anymore so I can't really look over you PR. If someone is will to take over the project I'd be more than willing to transfer it to them." I'm not talking about rights, I'm talking about what a level of decency I expect from someone I'd accidentally bump into on the street car, and you're basically countering with: "But he has a right to be an asshole!"
I'm talking about Github and it's broken user interface. It is the main place for open source code repositories and the model is broken. Many people complain about abandoned projects, or about struggling to maintain a library they no longer use.
Github should make it easier to collaborate socially around code, and one of the ways they should do this is by stopping wasted effort in pull requests.
