Re: What counts as a fork?

[Grey Knight <tinyplasticgreyknight@...>]

On 2017-11-29 10:12:32 GMT, steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com> wrote: 
> On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 11:59 AM, Paige DePol <lual@serfnet.org> wrote:
> > I would have to agree, I don't count successors to a previous version of
> > software as being a fork.
> 
> Now, I remember this word 'fork' before Github, and it was considered
> the Nuclear Option. E.g. when GCC forked just before the millenium,
> and the old fork lost. People got seriously upset about this kind of
> thing.
> 
> Github re-used and re-purposed the word, rather like how Facebook
> changed the operational meaning of 'friend'.  Nowadays, having lots of
> 'forks' of your Github project is a measure of success!

I think it varies somewhat even today.  IIRC a while ago (probably some
recent April Fool's Day) somebody posted a joke article about systemd forking
the Linux kernel, and a lot of people got quite angry before realising it was
a joke.  In the present day, a fairly dramatic example is among bitcoiners,
where forking is seen as a ~~moral wrong~~ akin to eating babies.

On the third hand, if you look back into the history of roguelike development
you can see an extensive chain of forkings and incestuous borrowings, and
that's going back into the 80s.  There's some light-hearted rivalry between
games but nobody takes it too seriously.

I suppose my conclusion is that the attitude of a project member towards
forks depends on the extent to which they consider the project to be Very
Serious Business.


> Personally, I don't think it a Bad thing, sometimes people need to try out
> new things. As long as credit to the original codebase is always given, both
> in the spirit and the letter of the license.

Completely agree!

--
Grey Knight