Hello Tom, Albert,
It is not clear to me when we should change the board status from "Active" to "Orphan". (Could you show me the basic guideline, Tom ? or Albert ?) There are many boards without maintainers, which are still "Active".
This is a known, and so far, open, question. Right now, orphan boards are those which were marked so in the former MAINTAINERS file. My personal opinion is that "Active" should mean the board is activelymaintained and any maintainer e-mail address associated with the board is that of an active maintainer, and "Orphan" means the board is not actively maintained any more but still builds, and any address associated with it is that of the last known maintainer(s).
+1 to this definition and yes, oops, I meant Orphan not Inactive.
We should clarify this definition of Active/Orphan in the boards.cfg header text.
Also, maybe we could simply mark dead addresses by suffixing the domain part with ".invalid"? For instance, the "dead" form of my own e-mail address would be albert.u.boot@aribaud.net.invalid? That would make sure that no mail is ever submitted to a correct domain with a bogus recipient.
Definition: "Active" should mean the board is activelymaintained and any maintainer e-mail address associated with the board is that of an active maintainer, and "Orphan" means the board is not actively maintained any more but still builds, and any address associated with it is that of the last known maintainer(s).
If we adopt this definition, adding "dead address" or ".invalid" is redundant, isn't it?
Changing the status to "Orphan" is enough because "Orphan" declares its email address is invalid.
Best Regards Masahiro Yamada