The Freedom of Fork
Posted Aug 30, 2008 23:28 UTC (Sat) by
Dieter_be (guest, #53677)
In reply to:
The Freedom of Fork by dlang
Parent article:
The Freedom of Fork
Exactly.
Technically, a fork on github is actually a git clone.
People doing 'forks' on github will in 99% of the cases try to get their code merged in the mainline (issuing a 'pull request' of the fork). The other 0.9% just wants his own codebase to play with and also does not intend a real fork in the classic meaning.
So this is something totally different then forks in the classic terminology.
Also, git makes it easy to import changes after branches have diverged a lot, so that should promote the 'giving back to the original project/other forks' part.
Besides, I think that just because the barrier is so low, people who want to fork in the classic sense but without thinking things trough will abandon their fork pretty soon / won't achieve results that pulls users away anyway. Not a big loss for the broader public there... A fork can only be successful and get much adoption if it's well thought out and in that case we don't have much to fear.
just my 2c.
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