Repos could really have exactly that. A dead man's switch that asks you every, I don't know, three.to six months - via email even - "you good for this repo still?". You answer with a click "yup" and that's it - a signal on a repo on github or whatever that says "still alive". Otherwise "uh oh - we need help" and then a mechanism there to immediately offer alternative forks with a good enough signal "strength". It's like a pinky promise instead of actual repo activity.
You wouldn’t even necessarily need git/github to implement a new system! Agree on a standard file name like .githeartbeat containing a timestamp. Every few months (or w/e), active maintainers could push a commit to update the timestamp.
It sounds like a good idea, but I'm afraid it may be a nightmare for packagers (like the ones providing packages on GNU/linux distros), as they see updates to upstream only to realize they are just pings and don't need to be repackaged.
It wouldn't be that often, though. And maybe they would actually love to have such heartbeat. I would love to hear a packager on that.
Personally I'm a fan of zero touch where I as a developer submit my code repo to app store like play store, apple app store, flathub or something and they just build it using a standard definition that the store defines and make it available on the store. Kind of feels like a lot of effort for every distro to look at every change in every application...
Repos could also have a notice like "It's been X days since last interaction" which would track the last commit, merge or even just comment in the issue tracker made by the maintainers.
On github? I can't do that. Process has to be as frictionless as possible - hence not in a repo in files itself. A simple email with a button, not to bother maintainers too much / at all.
