is this project dead?

[deronnax]

Last commit was 2 years ago, last release was 3 years ago. Since this project is very important to the python ecosystem, would you please transfer ownership to an entity willing to maintain it?

[SvenStaehs]

while there has not been a feature, just a couple housekeeping commits in the past 9 months, when a severe issue with new pytest release arose, it was resolved within ten days of reporting.

I wouldn't call it dead, but definitely in maintenance stage of its life-cycle ;)