GS Extend: Maintainers/ Contributors

[Tyblitz]

The current GS Extend repo is (a bit of) a mess: half of the plugins are outdated, the star ratings aren't very indicative of quality, and some plugins are just outright noise. 
I think it's a much needed feature to be able to maintain / contribute to plugins that are no longer under active development, but still have valuable functionality/ valuable concepts, or just increase collaboration overall.

Currently there are 4 ways (with major drawbacks) to do this:

• Create a new plugin in GS Extend, with slightly different wording (e.g. news manager 2, 'new custom fields', or alike). However, this only adds more confusion to the mess.
  
• Upload a modified version in attachment of the plugin's community forum (supposing there is one).
  However, 90% of potentially interested users will miss out on this and it lacks officical update status.
  
• Request account access of the owner of the plugin (if, and that's a big IF, (s)he's still around and agrees to do so).
  Secrity-wise the worst solution ever.
  
• Contribute to the Git repo and have the owner of the plugin do the Extend updates (if, and that's a big IF, the owner is still around, and responsive). I've been doing this for a while with a couple of HelgeSverre's plugins (Plugin installer, Password Protect).
  

As long as GS Extend is featured as the 'official plugin repository', it needs (apart from a working search):

• The ability to authorize plugin maintainers/ contributors by the owner
  
• Or/ And the ability to transfer ownership of a plugin
  

Alternatively, GS Extend could be shut (I don't like this option), and individual plugin authors encouraged to use Git and Git releases (but this considerably heightens the barrier to initial contribution), or some central repo of verified plugins could be set up..

What are your thoughts? And also, and especially, what is reasonably doable?