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The "we/you can just fork it" argument really doesn't work out. And when it's used by maintainers to justify something, it's a total cop-out. The fact is that
by argonaut 13y ago
The "we/you can just fork it" argument really doesn't work out. And when it's used by maintainers to justify something, it's a total cop-out.
The fact is that forking it will fragment the community, confuse users, slow down adoption, and generally have negative effects for years and years. Even if everyone eventually moves to the fork (best-case scenario!), the ecosystem will have lost tremendous amounts of momentum.
- steveklabnik 13y ago> The "we/you can just fork it" argument really doesn't work out. Worked pretty well for MySQL.
- beaumartinez 13y agoNot really, MariaDB has nowhere near the adoption levels MySQL has. Even so, MySQL was one of the biggest gratis databases, and it happened to be bought by a company that specialized in selling established enterprise database software. There was concern RE the support a gratis database would have under such a company. The situation that created MariaDB is very specific, and very different to the one Node.js is in.
- mattmanser 13y agoLibreOffice then?
- alecthomas 13y agoI think the XOrg fork from XFree86 is the best example I can think of.