How long to wait for maintainers?

Hello all, I have a professional interest in developing, if not maintaining, the SQL_Parser package, currently in devel stage. I was going to write one for Ruffdogs if I hadn't found this project. In looking at the package's page, I have noticed that there has not been active development or bug responses for about 8 months. Similarly, there are no new bugs being made, probably due to inactivity of the project as a whole. I would like to pick up some of that slack. I have already responded to each of the three outstanding bugs, providing patches where needed. Now granted, it has only been one day, but in light of the past inactivity of the project, I wonder, "How long should I wait?" which in turn begs the question, "Until I do what?" If I were to be considered as maintainer for this project, I would be willing. Regarding my abilities, IMHO I am well qualified, being a professional programmer who has a heart for doing things the right way. I have read and reread GOF "Design Patterns" for instance. I program daily for work, being our company's coding best-practices guru. Unfortunately, I haven't yet had the opportunity to submit any other patches to PEAR than the two that I included in my bug responses. So, I'm asking the list: 1. How long should I wait until I see activity from the maintainer? 2. If that time expires, what should I do to make sure that my patches can get reviewed? 3. What would it take to get the group here to trust me and my code? Should I just continue submitting my fixes and active development via enhancement requests on the SQL_Parser bug page? (But how would anyone know if the maintainer isn't monitoring the status of the project?) Thanks, Erich Enke Ruffdogs.com