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I think the wisdom of "just fork it" is that in a project the power lies with the people who do the work (yes, that power is often rented out in exchange for a

I think the wisdom of "just fork it" is that in a project the power lies with the people who do the work (yes, that power is often rented out in exchange for a pay cheque), and in an open source project you have the right to do that work without kowtowing to the authority of other people who did the work before you ("just fork it"). The important point lost in many of these anti-fork posts is that forks usually aren't hostile, and "just fork it" isn't usually a dismissal of people's input - rather, it's an invitation to do the work and to stop looking for permission. Which is really the core value of open source - no need for permission, "just do it". Forks also don't generally split communities because forks live within the community (and good community leaders foster the tolerance of forks). As an example, I have a fork going of someone else's open source project which I made to meet my client's needs. I've got an email thread going with the project owner, it's all very friendly, and one day the fork might merge back in again (probably in parts). I think this is how most forks work, with the exceptions making big headlines partly because they're juicy gossip but mostly because they are exactly that - exceptions.

kfreds 8mo ago
Well said. Open source helps with agency, freedom of association, and voluntary action. Maintainers have the freedom to choose whether to accept an idea or not. Users have the freedom to fork or not.
jeremyjh 8mo ago
Yes exactly. I've forked many a library to meet my own needs. Usually temporary, but not always. The fact that I can do this when I have to means I can use basically any library. The submitted post is written from the perspective of some kind of social network project. People saying "just fork it" in that perspective are clearly missing the bigger picture, hence the post. And the author of that post, didn't acknowledge that FOSS is much more varied than their particular project.
- zozbot234 8mo ago
  Social networks can fork while still being interoperable. That's what the whole federation thing is all about.
  - bookofsleepyjoe 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - exe34 8mo ago
      is this a common problem? are software maintainers in the east sufficiently committed to racial superiority that they can't work with people in the west?
    - ImPostingOnHN 8mo ago
      If almost everybody thinks you're so insufferable that they don't want to interact with you, chances are, you are. This has been a function of societies for as long as societies have existed, and addressing it requires honest reflection. In this case: "why is there such a huge overlap between people competent and willing to host federated social media servers, and people who don't want to be around me?" Unfortunately there is a pervasive attitude amongst a certain personality type, that if someone criticizes them, then that someone must be wrong, and must be fought, no matter what. It's common enough to have ICD-10 diagnosis codes for it: Narcissistic Personality Disorder and/or Oppositional Defiant Disorder. This is why I rarely try to change people's minds anymore unless they appear receptive to it: there's a good chance an overactive amygdala will see it as an attack and just make more work for me, wasting my time. It's easier to just talk to them about something else, or if they're being unnecessarily rude to people: not talk to them. You might reflect upon your own short comment history (or your username) and judge for yourself what proportion is polite & respectful vs. rude & belligerent, and consequently whether the average person would want to try having a nice conversation with you.
      - andinsky 8mo ago
        > If almost everybody thinks you're so insufferable that they don't want to interact with you, chances are, you are. Or they disagree with your views so intensely that they want you silenced. That's what happened with https://spinster.xyz https://spinster.xyz defederation. A group of male administrators of other Fediverse instances took umbrage at the women-centered, feminist discussion there and between them defederated hundreds of servers away from Spinster. This was on top of misogynistic attacks and attempts to deplatform. Some unfortunately successful, like the removal of the Spinster app from the Google Play Store and F-Droid.
- Aurornis 8mo ago
  > Yes exactly. I've forked many a library to meet my own needs. Usually temporary, This isn’t really what the article is about. Doing a temporary fork for your own needs is equivalent to maintaining some personal patches. The article is talking about running a forked project as an active fork that other people are using. That comes with the social overhead and community complications.
boltzmann-brain 8mo ago
in 30+ years of software development i've never heard "just fork it" or "you're welcome to fork it" used as an encouragement and i've heard it as a dismissal countless times. the article is spot on, and your interpretation of the described real-life situation is a rosy-tinted hypothetical at best.
- chii 8mo ago
  > i've heard it as a dismissal countless times. a project owner have the right to be dismissive about anything regarding their own project. This is why "just fork it" is both dismissive, but also power. If you are simply asking a project owner to do somethings you wanted (often for free, i might add), then why shouldn't they be dismissive? If you have an idea for said project that the owner is dismissive about, then you fork it - prove that the idea is good.
  - boltzmann-brain 8mo ago
    i disagree with that stance. an open source project is made up of contributions by dozens, maybe thousands of people, and they almost always only contributed to that one specific repository under that one specific person's control due to game theoretical processes that are mostly random, such as first-mover advantage, schelling points, etc. the collective effort of those people usually far outweighs what the controlling person usually contributed to ostensibly earn this sort of privilege. if talking about a FOSS repository, that person cannot be correctly described as "the owner" of that work, as the work is owned by the public, i.e. anyone who is provided access to the code. the person you are describing is merely the current maintainer of the project and the fact that most of the work they are maintaining is not theirs, but comes from the public, and is meant for the public, immediately puts a burden of responsibility on them of acting in a way that is much better than "a project owner have the right to be dismissive about anything regarding their own project" - a mode of operation which, if you pull in all the considerations i presented here, sounds childish. a much better way is to talk about this like you would about an old watch: you are merely maintaining it for future generations. that puts you in a more humble and less combative mindset.
zozbot234 8mo ago
> forks usually aren't hostile This. You can't even issue a Git pull/merge request without technically forking the project first! It's super common.
- Aurornis 8mo ago
  The article isn’t talking about the fork operation. It’s talking about running and maintaining a forked project as a new project and community.
Aurornis 8mo ago
> you have the right to do that work without kowtowing to the authority of other people who did the work before you ("just fork it"). > The important point lost in many of these anti-fork posts is that forks usually aren't hostile, and "just fork it" isn't usually a dismissal of people's input In my experience, forking a semi-active project can often be viewed as hostile by the maintainers. Some of those maintainers may turn it into a holy war where they try to throw their weight around to push back on the fork. I’ve seen claims of “trying to stealing our project” to mobilizing users of their Discord to warn people to avoid the fork across Reddit and other social media. It doesn’t always go that way, as you experienced with the project you forked. The situation you described is about as non-threatening as it gets, though, because you forked for a single client and you don’t want to become a maintainer of a new project.
andai 8mo ago
So this is interesting. It seems worth distinguishing here between a fork (the code itself), and a schism (a split in the community). A fork doesn't require a schism, but a schism does seem to require a fork.

kfreds 8mo ago

Well said. Open source helps with agency, freedom of association, and voluntary action. Maintainers have the freedom to choose whether to accept an idea or not. Users have the freedom to fork or not.

jeremyjh 8mo ago

Yes exactly. I've forked many a library to meet my own needs. Usually temporary, but not always. The fact that I can do this when I have to means I can use basically any library. The submitted post is written from the perspective of some kind of social network project. People saying "just fork it" in that perspective are clearly missing the bigger picture, hence the post. And the author of that post, didn't acknowledge that FOSS is much more varied than their particular project.

zozbot234 8mo ago
Social networks can fork while still being interoperable. That's what the whole federation thing is all about.
- bookofsleepyjoe 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - exe34 8mo ago
    is this a common problem? are software maintainers in the east sufficiently committed to racial superiority that they can't work with people in the west?
  - ImPostingOnHN 8mo ago
    If almost everybody thinks you're so insufferable that they don't want to interact with you, chances are, you are. This has been a function of societies for as long as societies have existed, and addressing it requires honest reflection. In this case: "why is there such a huge overlap between people competent and willing to host federated social media servers, and people who don't want to be around me?" Unfortunately there is a pervasive attitude amongst a certain personality type, that if someone criticizes them, then that someone must be wrong, and must be fought, no matter what. It's common enough to have ICD-10 diagnosis codes for it: Narcissistic Personality Disorder and/or Oppositional Defiant Disorder. This is why I rarely try to change people's minds anymore unless they appear receptive to it: there's a good chance an overactive amygdala will see it as an attack and just make more work for me, wasting my time. It's easier to just talk to them about something else, or if they're being unnecessarily rude to people: not talk to them. You might reflect upon your own short comment history (or your username) and judge for yourself what proportion is polite & respectful vs. rude & belligerent, and consequently whether the average person would want to try having a nice conversation with you.
    - andinsky 8mo ago
      > If almost everybody thinks you're so insufferable that they don't want to interact with you, chances are, you are. Or they disagree with your views so intensely that they want you silenced. That's what happened with https://spinster.xyz https://spinster.xyz defederation. A group of male administrators of other Fediverse instances took umbrage at the women-centered, feminist discussion there and between them defederated hundreds of servers away from Spinster. This was on top of misogynistic attacks and attempts to deplatform. Some unfortunately successful, like the removal of the Spinster app from the Google Play Store and F-Droid.
Aurornis 8mo ago
> Yes exactly. I've forked many a library to meet my own needs. Usually temporary, This isn’t really what the article is about. Doing a temporary fork for your own needs is equivalent to maintaining some personal patches. The article is talking about running a forked project as an active fork that other people are using. That comes with the social overhead and community complications.

boltzmann-brain 8mo ago

in 30+ years of software development i've never heard "just fork it" or "you're welcome to fork it" used as an encouragement and i've heard it as a dismissal countless times. the article is spot on, and your interpretation of the described real-life situation is a rosy-tinted hypothetical at best.

chii 8mo ago
> i've heard it as a dismissal countless times. a project owner have the right to be dismissive about anything regarding their own project. This is why "just fork it" is both dismissive, but also power. If you are simply asking a project owner to do somethings you wanted (often for free, i might add), then why shouldn't they be dismissive? If you have an idea for said project that the owner is dismissive about, then you fork it - prove that the idea is good.
- boltzmann-brain 8mo ago
  i disagree with that stance. an open source project is made up of contributions by dozens, maybe thousands of people, and they almost always only contributed to that one specific repository under that one specific person's control due to game theoretical processes that are mostly random, such as first-mover advantage, schelling points, etc. the collective effort of those people usually far outweighs what the controlling person usually contributed to ostensibly earn this sort of privilege. if talking about a FOSS repository, that person cannot be correctly described as "the owner" of that work, as the work is owned by the public, i.e. anyone who is provided access to the code. the person you are describing is merely the current maintainer of the project and the fact that most of the work they are maintaining is not theirs, but comes from the public, and is meant for the public, immediately puts a burden of responsibility on them of acting in a way that is much better than "a project owner have the right to be dismissive about anything regarding their own project" - a mode of operation which, if you pull in all the considerations i presented here, sounds childish. a much better way is to talk about this like you would about an old watch: you are merely maintaining it for future generations. that puts you in a more humble and less combative mindset.

zozbot234 8mo ago

> forks usually aren't hostile This. You can't even issue a Git pull/merge request without technically forking the project first! It's super common.

Aurornis 8mo ago
The article isn’t talking about the fork operation. It’s talking about running and maintaining a forked project as a new project and community.

Aurornis 8mo ago

> you have the right to do that work without kowtowing to the authority of other people who did the work before you ("just fork it"). > The important point lost in many of these anti-fork posts is that forks usually aren't hostile, and "just fork it" isn't usually a dismissal of people's input In my experience, forking a semi-active project can often be viewed as hostile by the maintainers. Some of those maintainers may turn it into a holy war where they try to throw their weight around to push back on the fork. I’ve seen claims of “trying to stealing our project” to mobilizing users of their Discord to warn people to avoid the fork across Reddit and other social media. It doesn’t always go that way, as you experienced with the project you forked. The situation you described is about as non-threatening as it gets, though, because you forked for a single client and you don’t want to become a maintainer of a new project.

andai 8mo ago

So this is interesting. It seems worth distinguishing here between a fork (the code itself), and a schism (a split in the community). A fork doesn't require a schism, but a schism does seem to require a fork.