Protocol for taking over abandoned addons

[vikingking]

I have been patching two addons Ara_Broker_Reputations and Ara_Broker_XP since they were abandoned in 2013. I have tried to reach out to Aranath who is the original author about formally taking over these two, rather than just submitting them as patches. I have had no response, so I assume that they have abandoned them.

The main reason for assuming full control is so that I don't have to label my changes as patches, and so that I can also post them to Curse and other sites. I don't want to rename them, and want him to retain full credit of original authorship.

Taking over someone's work like this is new to me. What is the protocol here? I obviously don't have access on WoW Interface to update the original postings for these addons, but would like to potentially update them there if that is possible.