Hi @braden - thanks for bumping this thread with the Product Working Group. We read and discussed this as a group. You can find the recording of our meeting + notes here, although I was not at a computer and didn’t take notes, so this is my summary but I do recommend you watch the video if you can.
Basically, we discussed the deprecation process, and how it is a process: it’s not an immediate “this code will not work!!!” statement, but rather an opportunity for a maintainer to inform the community they will no longer be maintaining it, giving the community an appropriate amount of time to find another maintainer if the community finds it useful. I also don’t see a reason why a non-openedx repository can’t go through the Open edX official DEPR process.
In this case, I think if OpenCraft is no longer able to maintain this block, you should begin the deprecation process. You should follow OEP-21 in terms of communication and good faith effort to find a new maintainer. You should work with @jmakowski in making sure key interest groups have an opportunity to participate in the DEPR process.
We agree with you that facets of this XBlock could and perhaps should make their way into the Product Core, but at this time we can’t identify a product person to take on the definition work or a dev team to do the work. Perhaps part of the DEPR could see if there was strong interest, one or more groups could collaborate together to not maintain the old block but instead put effort/money into improving functionality in the product core.
Please let me know what other questions or thoughts you have!