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I think it's only fair that the original repo should be the most promoted one. Usually, the original author has put a lot of thought and effort into coming up w

I think it's only fair that the original repo should be the most promoted one. Usually, the original author has put a lot of thought and effort into coming up with the idea and turning it into a popular open source project. You don't want to create an environment in which forkers can easily steal credit from the original author(s). It takes a lot of passion and goodwill for someone to start a new open source project. I think they deserve some credit. If an 'owner' no longer feels up to the task of managing their project, GitHub lets them transfer it to someone else. That's what happened with ExpressJS and it worked out fine.

omribahumi 11y ago
When do forks become a new project? Would Xorg still be a fork of XFree86? Would Ubuntu still be a fork of Debian? Also, sometimes a project is abandoned and a fork is still maintained. Don't you think that the fork should be in the spotlight in that scenario?
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Do you consider Libreoffice it's own project!
  - McElroy 11y ago
    I for one do. They've diverged heavily since forking from OpenOffice. LibreOffice is a great project, I use it myself and I recommend it to all my friends and family.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      That was meant to be ended with a question mark. Sorry.
tessierashpool 11y ago
I think it's only fair that the original repo should be the most promoted one. Usually, the original author has put a lot of thought and effort into coming up with the idea and turning it into a popular open source project. OP brings up the example of a project where the original repo shouldn't be the most promoted one, because it's been abandoned, while plenty of other repos are still alive. I blogged about the same thing earlier this month and used the same example. if you haven't encountered this problem, you will. it is absolutely a problem every developer will encounter. it's only a matter of time. somebody starts a great project, doesn't have time to keep it alive, and the community fractures because GitHub has no way to differentiate between "original repo" and "canonical repo." not going to rant about this because I already did in a blog post: https://www.pandastrike.com/posts/20150610-thought-experiment-github-community-view https://www.pandastrike.com/posts/20150610-thought-experimen... If an 'owner' no longer feels up to the task of managing their project, GitHub lets them transfer it to someone else. That's what happened with ExpressJS and it worked out fine. this is a ludicrous statement. the Express.js transfer of ownership was a ridiculous fiasco full of angry drama, hurt feelings, and core developers resigning from the project. documented here: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-bizarre-bazaar-who-owns-expressjs.html http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-bizarre-bazaar-... also, the idea that you can solve this problem by having the original owner transfer ownership doesn't make any sense. the whole problem is that the original owner isn't paying attention at all, doesn't care in the first place, and wouldn't know who to transfer ownership to, if they did care. it happens all the time.
- jondubois 11y ago
  >> this is a ludicrous statement. the Express.js transfer of ownership was a ridiculous fiasco full of angry drama, hurt feelings True, I should rephrase; from the consumer's point of view it turned out fine :p The project is still healthy. About ExpressJS, I did read something about one of the main developers not even being aware that the transfer was happening until the last minute. I also heard that there might have been money involved and it probably wasn't a fair process. There are a lot of ethical dilemmas there. A transfer of ownership doesn't have to be this nasty though.
tacone 11y ago
A root repository has pretty much always a big advantage, and it's usually always the one with most star and watchers. If you were to sort everything only on the basis of popularity, not much would change, except perhaps a few notable exceptions. It would just be more fair.
z3t4 11y ago
> You don't want to create an environment in which forkers can easily steal credit from the original author(s). In most licenses I've read on Github, even the very permissive ones, the creator will still have copyright of all forks, even if all his/her code has been replaced.

I think it's only fair that the original repo should be the most promoted one. Usually, the original author has put a lot of thought and effort into coming up with the idea and turning it into a popular open source project. You don't want to create an environment in which forkers can easily steal credit from the original author(s). It takes a lot of passion and goodwill for someone to start a new open source project. I think they deserve some credit. If an 'owner' no longer feels up to the task of managing their project, GitHub lets them transfer it to someone else. That's what happened with ExpressJS and it worked out fine.

omribahumi 11y ago

When do forks become a new project? Would Xorg still be a fork of XFree86? Would Ubuntu still be a fork of Debian? Also, sometimes a project is abandoned and a fork is still maintained. Don't you think that the fork should be in the spotlight in that scenario?

chris_wot 11y ago
Do you consider Libreoffice it's own project!
- McElroy 11y ago
  I for one do. They've diverged heavily since forking from OpenOffice. LibreOffice is a great project, I use it myself and I recommend it to all my friends and family.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    That was meant to be ended with a question mark. Sorry.

tessierashpool 11y ago

I think it's only fair that the original repo should be the most promoted one. Usually, the original author has put a lot of thought and effort into coming up with the idea and turning it into a popular open source project. OP brings up the example of a project where the original repo shouldn't be the most promoted one, because it's been abandoned, while plenty of other repos are still alive. I blogged about the same thing earlier this month and used the same example. if you haven't encountered this problem, you will. it is absolutely a problem every developer will encounter. it's only a matter of time. somebody starts a great project, doesn't have time to keep it alive, and the community fractures because GitHub has no way to differentiate between "original repo" and "canonical repo." not going to rant about this because I already did in a blog post: https://www.pandastrike.com/posts/20150610-thought-experiment-github-community-view https://www.pandastrike.com/posts/20150610-thought-experimen... If an 'owner' no longer feels up to the task of managing their project, GitHub lets them transfer it to someone else. That's what happened with ExpressJS and it worked out fine. this is a ludicrous statement. the Express.js transfer of ownership was a ridiculous fiasco full of angry drama, hurt feelings, and core developers resigning from the project. documented here: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-bizarre-bazaar-who-owns-expressjs.html http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-bizarre-bazaar-... also, the idea that you can solve this problem by having the original owner transfer ownership doesn't make any sense. the whole problem is that the original owner isn't paying attention at all, doesn't care in the first place, and wouldn't know who to transfer ownership to, if they did care. it happens all the time.

jondubois 11y ago
>> this is a ludicrous statement. the Express.js transfer of ownership was a ridiculous fiasco full of angry drama, hurt feelings True, I should rephrase; from the consumer's point of view it turned out fine :p The project is still healthy. About ExpressJS, I did read something about one of the main developers not even being aware that the transfer was happening until the last minute. I also heard that there might have been money involved and it probably wasn't a fair process. There are a lot of ethical dilemmas there. A transfer of ownership doesn't have to be this nasty though.

tacone 11y ago

A root repository has pretty much always a big advantage, and it's usually always the one with most star and watchers. If you were to sort everything only on the basis of popularity, not much would change, except perhaps a few notable exceptions. It would just be more fair.

z3t4 11y ago

> You don't want to create an environment in which forkers can easily steal credit from the original author(s). In most licenses I've read on Github, even the very permissive ones, the creator will still have copyright of all forks, even if all his/her code has been replaced.