Deltas (ie. patches you apply on top of upstream release when making a package) are not forks. Sane distros do that instead of forking for most packages if they

Deltas (ie. patches you apply on top of upstream release when making a package) are not forks. Sane distros do that instead of forking for most packages if they have to change anything. Also, most package maintainers know the smaller the delta the less work they have to do, so it's in their own interest to minimise the changes (or try to push changes upstream). (Note: I'm not a Fedora user so can't say whether Fedora, referred to in the article, belongs in that group) OTOH, code dumps of forked projects containing a mix of upstream and modified code without clear indication which code was pulled and which added/modified are a nightmare to work with. [EDIT: not to say Google doesn't, as in the submitted article it's clear that they're trying.]