So, to disown a package from the official repos would no longer require just clicking "orphan" but unsetting the maintainer flag in SVN/CVS. And adopting would require adding to the maintainer flag rather than just clicking "adopt". Given the majority of packages don't even have the motivation to add ChangeLogs, this extra layer of annoyance to take over the maintaining of a package just does not seem appealing. This is why I see no point in discussing this because in practice people will not change the maintainer package until they do an update/rebuild at which point they should change the maintainer line anyway...
Allan
Sorry, I was a bit behind on this thread so this reply is a little late. The web interface keeps track of the current package owner for all repos, right? Why not let the web interface handle the maintainer tag when a PKGBUILD is uploaded or when a package is adopted or disowned. It would be a simple matter of appending/replacing a field or a comment (the former if the information should be readily obtainable through pacman). This would free the actual maintainer from having to worry about it and would not change the current adoptation/orphaning process. Xyne