3 ms·

On Forking a FOSS project

6 points by fogus 17y ago

fogus 17y ago
Two things struck me: "Had he contact me before forking my project I would have gladly discussed with him about improvements that could be made and I would most likely had invited him to join the project." and "My project is currently stagnating because I don't have much spare times and I have to focus on other things for now, that said some help would have been more than welcome." Sounds like a lose-lose situation for the forker.
- jrockway 17y ago
  Yeah, it just sounds like he wanted to have the fun of implementing something, but someone else beat him to it.
yummyfajitas 17y ago
Ok, so he made changes you wanted to make but didn't get around to? Simple solution: git pull ...
- tedunangst 17y ago
  Are the changes all compatible? Or are some of them incompatible for trivial reasons because "it's a fork, no reason to be compatible"?
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    While I was being a little glib, it probably won't be that difficult to incorporate some or all of the changes. Certainly easier than redoing them.
- jrockway 17y ago
  You should really rebase, so as not to clutter up the history with meaningless merge commits. In the author's case, he said he abandoned the project (or wasn't working on it), so it should just be a fast-forward.
fstz06 17y ago
So you are telling us that someone modified the source code you released as 'open source'?? That Bastard! And he didn't discuss this with you before? That's absolutely disgusting!!
carbon8 17y ago
Obviously not a DVCS user.
thelema314 17y ago
Fork early, fork often. It's the GPL that legalizes merging, past that, the worst that happens is that someone wastes their time on code that doesn't get used. If it's the fork, tough cookies for them. If it's the "original author", they can choose whether and how to benefit from the code that has been written to extend their codebase. If you're angry that he forked your code, fork his code back into your project. Or at least the parts of it that you want. The parts you don't, leave behind. Does it burn that you didn't get to order him around on how the project should have been improved? He doesn't need your permission, get over it.

6 points by fogus 17y ago

fogus 17y ago

Two things struck me: "Had he contact me before forking my project I would have gladly discussed with him about improvements that could be made and I would most likely had invited him to join the project." and "My project is currently stagnating because I don't have much spare times and I have to focus on other things for now, that said some help would have been more than welcome." Sounds like a lose-lose situation for the forker.

jrockway 17y ago
Yeah, it just sounds like he wanted to have the fun of implementing something, but someone else beat him to it.

yummyfajitas 17y ago

Ok, so he made changes you wanted to make but didn't get around to? Simple solution: git pull ...

tedunangst 17y ago
Are the changes all compatible? Or are some of them incompatible for trivial reasons because "it's a fork, no reason to be compatible"?
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  While I was being a little glib, it probably won't be that difficult to incorporate some or all of the changes. Certainly easier than redoing them.
jrockway 17y ago
You should really rebase, so as not to clutter up the history with meaningless merge commits. In the author's case, he said he abandoned the project (or wasn't working on it), so it should just be a fast-forward.

fstz06 17y ago

So you are telling us that someone modified the source code you released as 'open source'?? That Bastard! And he didn't discuss this with you before? That's absolutely disgusting!!

carbon8 17y ago

Obviously not a DVCS user.

thelema314 17y ago

Fork early, fork often. It's the GPL that legalizes merging, past that, the worst that happens is that someone wastes their time on code that doesn't get used. If it's the fork, tough cookies for them. If it's the "original author", they can choose whether and how to benefit from the code that has been written to extend their codebase. If you're angry that he forked your code, fork his code back into your project. Or at least the parts of it that you want. The parts you don't, leave behind. Does it burn that you didn't get to order him around on how the project should have been improved? He doesn't need your permission, get over it.