3 ms·
What would it mean to “normalise” forking? The costs of maintaining a fork are significant, and if one group of programmers are being funded to work on the proj
by enneff 3y ago
What would it mean to “normalise” forking? The costs of maintaining a fork are significant, and if one group of programmers are being funded to work on the project then it can be very difficult to fork a project in any meaningful way without significant resources behind it.
Also IIUC most of the parties in this conversation are corporations. They’re all trying to enjoy the benefits of open source development for a variety of reasons.
- lmm 3y ago> The costs of maintaining a fork are significant Why? If we have tooling or workflows that assume forks don't happen, maybe we can fix those. Forking should be cheap, easy and frequent.
- waynesonfire 3y agoRight below your comment was another comment that started with, "The truth is that a fork hurts everyone." So, which is it?
- lmm 3y agoCurrently forks are painful, because they aren't normalized i.e. our tools and workflows don't expect them. I'm saying rather than discouraging forks we should adapt our tools and workflows to expect them.
- ericb 3y agoSure, tooling could be better. But the real work is all the hard work that goes into a fork. I've watched open forks die all the time--all it takes is no one to step up and do/pay for the work, which is basically the default, because it is in everyone's interest if someone else is the one to do that. I think that's really the crux of the problem--there are plenty of folks willing to maintain software for money, and a whole lot of people who'd rather it not cost money and if it does, not their money. If the tooling is better, who is going to maintain this?
- throwaway2037 3y agoI assume OP meant cost == community. That is the hard part of a fork.