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You say they've finally given permission for someone to merge fixes. But it's MIT licensed, so why wasn't it just cloned and continued under another name?
by kabes 5y ago
You say they've finally given permission for someone to merge fixes. But it's MIT licensed, so why wasn't it just cloned and continued under another name?
- Buttons840 5y agoProbably has been but I (and others) just don't realize it.
- kongin 5y agoBecause people have forgotten that forking is the response to not liking something in open source, not trying a hostile takeover of the original project. You have to be competent though, which is too high a bar for the majority of people who want to change things.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoCentralised forges mean we can't really “just fork”. That worked when you got code from your friends-of-friends, so they could just give you the fork instead of the “original”, but now? How do you even find the current latest fork?
- kongin 5y ago>Centralised forges mean we can't really “just fork”. How hard is it to make a public git repo? Packaging your software falls into the 'being competent' pile that's too hard.
- mkj 5y agoIt seems easier than ever to me - you click the github Network link and see which fork has forks itself. It'd be nice if github could show some activity metric alongside all those forks too I guess. If only they accepted pull requests!
- wizzwizz4 5y agoIf you're looking for a fork (and the fork is on GitHub, and it's been around for a few months), yes. But if you know about a fork, you're already ¾ of the way to finding it. If you're getting software from your friends, generally they'll pick up the fork and you'll end up with it. If you're getting it from The Official Repository on the Centralised Forge, that doesn't happen.
- belltaco 5y agoWhy forking of an abandoned project a hostile takeover? If anything it's the opposite.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago> But it's MIT licensed, so why wasn't it just cloned and continued under another name? Contributing a patch is a one-time operation. Maintaining a fork and keeping it up to date means you have to constantly integrate upstream work into your work if you want it to remain relevant. It's the difference between fixing a single issue and owning a project indefinitely.
- urthor 5y agoSounds like OpenAI itself cannot be bothered to maintain the original project. A well meaning forker (forkee?) interested in RL looking to make a name for themselves could do the world a huge amount of good.
- hirako2000 5y agoI would fork it and mainly provide time to arbitrate changes. I would argue that it is difficult to make sense of the community desires though. Looking at the issues, the path desired by the community for the project isn't clear. If you mind clarifying, I wouldn't mind helping out.