determine if the owner has really gone away or just doesn't want to maintain it

Yeah, there is the posibility that a module's author really has gone away beyond recall. Some years ago, a co-worker died leaving nothing but some encrypted disks... And even if they weren't - none of his relatives had interest or expertise to see whether there was anything valuable to the world on them.

These are situations which should also be thought of. Well, by whom?

--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}