> how "deadly" was the Node.js/io.js fork, really? It wasn't, ultimately - it just served as a reality check for the Node maintainers at the time and helped sp

> how "deadly" was the Node.js/io.js fork, really? It wasn't, ultimately - it just served as a reality check for the Node maintainers at the time and helped spur some much-needed changes to the way the project was being managed. The fact that there can only be one truly canonical repo forced the disaffected contributors to splinter off into an entirely new project with a different name. If that wasn't the case, and forks were truly first-class repos, then they may have opted for that instead - and we'd have had "node" and "other node" instead. Personally, I think that would have been much muddier. The node/io.js split and eventual reunion is a fantastic example of why the system as it stands currently - which strongly encourages schisms to be explicit and branded distinctly - is in fact a very practical model.