Process for releasing registered but apparently unused names for reuse

[nchammas]

What's the process for investigating whether a name registered on PyPI can be released for reuse by another party? Do we file an issue here, submit something via the feedback form, or something else?

To provide context, some contributors to the Apache Spark project are gearing up to package the project for distribution via PyPI. We're considering publishing under the name pyspark, since that's the name of the Python API for Apache Spark, and it's how the interactive PySpark shell is invoked. However, it appears that pyspark is already registered.

[dstufft]

So, we don't currently have a real process for this. It's kind of very adhoc at the moment. It appears pyspark is registered to user prabinb. If that username means anything to you then I'd suggest reaching out to them. If not I can send them an email and ask if they mind giving up the name.

[nchammas]

Hmm, no I don't recognize that name. @holdenk, do you?

[holdenk]

Its close to the name of the person who created SPARK-1267 back in 2014 about adding pip installability to Spark. I can try and see if I can get in touch with them through JIRA (but if we end up needing to use apacha-spark anyways).

[dstufft]

If y'all don't know the name I can poke them via the email address they have on file in PyPI's DB and see if they'll give up the name. I just figured if you knew them it'd be easiest that way first.

[nchammas]

@holdenk - I've contacted that person on JIRA to see if it's them: SPARK-18128.

[di]

Is it possible this person is the same as @prabinb? That user has a fork of https://github.com/apache/spark.

[nchammas]

It sounds like that user came through on JIRA and released the registration.

@holdenk - Shall we close this?

[holdenk]

Sounds good :)