4 ms·

I agree with the idea that "not all forks are considered equal" insofar as GitHub should do a better job of surfacing notable forks, rather than a fork that fix

I agree with the idea that "not all forks are considered equal" insofar as GitHub should do a better job of surfacing notable forks, rather than a fork that fixes a small environmental issue specific to a single person, or ones that don't make notable changes at all. In terms of not elevating the root to special status, I disagree. Recognizing one particular repository as canonical is a feature, not a bug. As much as git itself doesn't place any special significance on a particular repository, the culture of open source development does. Linus Torvalds can certainly say that his Linux repository doesn't hold special status, but that's just not true beyond a technical level. It's useful to be able to say "this is the main, supported version of this library"

MereInterest 11y ago
It is good to have a canonical version, but the canonical version and the root version may be entirely different. The author brought up this point, talking about a project that he had started, which was later forked. That fork has many more features, and should be considered the canonical version, but isn't.
- lsaferite 11y ago
  So, what are your choices to elect the canonical one then? First project pushed is canonical and can pass the baton? Seems better to drop the idea of a root or canonical version totally. Linking forked projects together with hashes for the network graph seems like a good idea personally.