You hit the nail on the head but also missed it too - unexpected deaths can occur at any age, so it's not impossible that this could happen to the owner of an extremely popular repo.
You can definitely fork the project, but there's more continuity if the existing project can be transferred to a different owner, or a notice added to the readme pointing the reader to the forked project. What about the deceased's private repos (which may or may not be important), or their account in general?
This is all quite fresh in my mind as I'm currently working through closing all my father's accounts down after he died recently, and social media accounts are much more difficult to deal with in some ways than utilities, insurances etc.
This is all quite fresh in my mind as I'm currently working through closing all my father's accounts down after he died recently, and social media accounts are much more difficult to deal with in some ways than utilities, insurances etc.