When a person owns a project record in freshmeat's database, it primarily means that the owner claims the responsibility of keeping this database record up to date with correct and timely information. Only people with a freshmeat user account can own freshmeat project records. It is possible for a project to be owned by more than one person, and each owner can be assigned a different "role" (which is purely symbolic).

If the owner so wishes, a project record can be restricted such that requests to change or add information to that project can only be made by an owner of the project. By default, anyone is allowed to request changes in a project or submit new release announcements for a project.

It is important to note that the owner of a project's freshmeat record is not necessarily the project's author or otherwise associated with the project in any official way. However, it is customary for authors to wish to own the freshmeat records for the projects that they have written, and it is generally granted to them upon request. Some software authors are too busy to care about keeping a freshmeat database record up to date and would be quite happy to let some stranger shoulder this burden, while others care deeply about controlling this information.

Whenever a new project is submitted to freshmeat, it is automatically owned by whomever submitted the project. It is possible for a project record to be ownerless if it existed in freshmeat's database since before January of 2001. One of the freshmeat staff's long-term goals is to make sure that every project is owned by at least one person. Several email messages were sent en masse during the year of 2001, petitioning program authors to either claim ownership of their projects or ask someone else to take this responsibility. Currently, the vast majority of the project records in freshmeat's database are owned by at least one person.