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> The developers hold the power here. They do not, this is exactly the point of free software. Anyone can fork it and release their fork under a different name
by _dps 7y ago
> The developers hold the power here.
They do not, this is exactly the point of free software. Anyone can fork it and release their fork under a different name. Don't want to do that work? Too bad. Want to force the developers to do it? Now which party is attempting to exercise power?
The only thing the developers are doing is refusing to modify their free gift to the community to line up with other people's non-technical priorities. This is not an exercise of power — is it simply reminding people that free software contributors are not indentured servants.
- djsumdog 7y agoExactly. Someone unhappy with the name, but wants to contribute to the product, can fork the project with a different name and start putting all their patches in there. If their features are good, they might get backported to the other project. That person may continue to rebase off the original as well. Eventually you might have two packages in all the major distros and CI that helps keep both trees in sync. That really is the right way forward here. Or ... the person could just make a CI that pulls, applies a single script that renames and rebrands everything, and then rerelease packages. That's all they have to do .. and if it catches on, well then they've made a change without having to bother the original developers at all.