there's now an official maintainer and corresponding releases of sparse, i think the ebuild should move to it eventually.
*sparse-0.1 (09 Nov 2006) 09 Nov 2006; Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> +sparse-0.1.ebuild, -sparse-2005.10.28.ebuild, -sparse-2006.09.23.ebuild: First real release.
oh sorry for not being up-to-0-day-date, cheers ;-).