I think open source should be like genetics: if you want a mutation that’s not going to be part of a project, fork it. If it’s important enough of a feature pe

I think open source should be like genetics: if you want a mutation that’s not going to be part of a project, fork it. If it’s important enough of a feature people will adopt it and it will coexist with the original project. If that convinces the original authors of the importance of a feature, you can merge and make the world beautiful again. If something is important to me but I have requirements that differ from the maintainers I usually maintain a fork even if I’m the only user of it. Sometimes it attracts people with similar needs and they build on top of my changes. Discussions in open source are a lot more discursive and mutually respecting when you’re offering to donate your work to the project because it helped fulfill a need that you had yourself, not only because it gave you a reason to invest time into it but also because you don’t usually invest time into things without a clear reason you needed that feature.