[LAD] forking

hi there,

i've read the aeolus / fork mails with interest and it seems like an
outburst of opinions (which is good!).

my view is a bit less of technical nature. i can't judge if code a is
better or worse than b, i can only make out a difference in using it. that
said, the broad field of users and their needs should be considered in
this discussion.

there are a few non-technical aspects that needs to be understood in order
to tackle it more sensitively.

-very talented people can lack (like others) the ability to communicate
"well" with others, whatever that might mean

-there are different kinds of "forks". to judge if it's a "bad" or a
"good" fork one must look at it in a differentiated way

-"bad" can be "good" for others and vice versa

-Linux people are a minority concerning the OS in use. this group is
further split to smaller partitions. There are many fundamentals that
people use to differentiate themselves. the great benefits of the variety
also have the "me cool gentoo - you stupid ubuntu" effect.

looking at extreme "fork" cases to analyze the effects (*why* one does
fork not listed here):

-dude forks projext x from author y and makes a piece of crap out of it
 -author sees his work dragged to dirt, while still being mentioned as author
 -author sees his reputation at risk

-dude forks project x from author y (a piece of crap) and makes butter out
of it
 -author feels that dude thinks he knows everyting better
 -author might loose control if fork gains more interest than the original

-dude forks project x from author y, changes some indendations, and put
himself as main author
 -author feels like dude is using author's work to adorn himself with
borrowed plumes wihtout added value

-dude forks project x from author y, puts it to a public repository where
it appears as the main project (and not as a fork)
 -author feels like dude is using author's work to adorn himself with
borrowed plumes wihtout added value

-dude forks project x from author y, makes commercially a fortune with it,
without much changes
 -author feels like dude is making money of of author's work while author
migh have no interest or success doing so

facit:
-anyone can do bad things if he/she just want's to bitch around
-there are some unwritten / non-license-dependant gentleman's agreements
how to fork and communicate
-the art is to make use of the power that forks can offer
-i think there are only few hostile forks out there

my personal experience with forks is limited to basially two projects, one
of which is ardour. i personally see it as a working prototype and a way
to dive into the code base (and doing it wrong). there was never an issue
with ardour's main author paul davis, he even gives hints (if the schedule
allows it), knowing that many modifications are of questionable coding
quailty or of no interest for him / ardour master.

as a last word, we should not forget that doing forks in a sourcetree is
by the word a natural thing to happen. <- my 1 cent

cheers,
thomas

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Received on Sun Sep 22 08:15:02 2013