Around the end of July the crates.io team opened an RFC to update the current crates.io usage policies. This policy update addresses operational concerns of the crates.io community service that have arisen since the last significant policy update in 2017, particularly related to name squatting and spam. The RFC has caused considerable discussion, and most of the suggested improvements have since been integrated into the proposal.

At the last team meeting the crates.io team decided to move the RFC forward and start the final comment period process.

We have been made aware by a couple of community members though that the RFC might not have been visible enough in the Rust community. We hope that this blog post changes that.

We invite you all to review the RFC and let us know if there are still any major concerns with these proposed policies.

Here is a quick TL;DR:

• The current policies are quite vague on a couple of topics. The new policies are more explicit.
• Reserving names is still allowed, but only to a certain degree and if you have a good reason for it.
• The crates.io team will try to contact crate owners before taking any actions.

Finally, if you have any comments, please open threads on the RFC diff, instead of using the main comment box, to keep the discussion more structured. Thank you!