
Fork My Code, Please (2012) - Tomte
http://www.skeeve.com/fork-my-code.html
======
nayuki
Similar sentiments:
[https://danielcompton.net/2014/11/19/dependencies](https://danielcompton.net/2014/11/19/dependencies)
"Open Source Is Free As in Baby"

~~~
m463
At first glance I thought the title next to your link was sort of "Free as in
Kittens" but it was slightly different and a good article.

------
atum47
I really like to share my projects, it's awesome when it gets featured. But I
have to agree, the list of users "suggestions" gets me tired every time.

why would do like this and not like that? like that would be better.

can you add touch support? I don't like using keys.

can you add key support? I don't want to click the screen.

why it's not working on my Android 4.1 version?

------
LukeShu
For some context, Chet Ramey and Arnold Robbins are the maintainers of GNU
Bash and GNU AWK, respectively.

------
btilly
This link was posted in the thread on Elm:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821447)

It makes a nice contrast to the way that the core Elm team pushes back on
forks and retains control for themselves.

~~~
akkartik
I agree with OP, and also with the Elm post.

But I'd like to point out that there's a hypocrisy at the heart of many
popular open source projects. Yes, you're legally allowed to fork, and yes
you'll be told to go "fork off" if you annoy the maintainers. But anyone who
has the _temerity_ to _actually_ create a fork will be shunned or constantly
bombarded with questions about why they're sowing division in the community.
My computer can hold multiple incompatible forks without them mutually
annihilating. Why can't people's belief systems?

Now, such sentiments often come from the peanut gallery rather than the
maintainer. But maintainers could help more. When was the last time anyone saw
a maintainer _thank_ someone for creating a fork? Forks should be treated more
like Andon Cords
([https://itrevolution.com/kata](https://itrevolution.com/kata)). Creating
them is an act of bravery, and even if you don't agree with the reasons they
are a valuable source of feedback. These are events to be celebrated and
encouraged. A fork that doesn't gain traction isn't a 'failure' to be derided,
it is a valuable experiment at worst, a negative result that didn't take away
energy from other efforts. At best it actually influenced upstream. Everyone
should be enormously grateful.

~~~
btilly
It seems common to me for people to say, "Can you create a fork and make a
pull request?"

But it does vary by project. The Linux kernel has tons of forks maintained by
random people for random reasons. But Python not so much.

~~~
akkartik
Ugh, I hate GitHub for polluting the terminology. There's two distinct senses
of 'fork' here:

a) A short-lived branch hosted elsewhere for managing the merge process. This
is a technical fork.

b) A long-lived branch that may never be merged back. This is a social fork.
Like egcs vs gcc, or Vim vs Neovim.

It's the latter that seems to have stigma attached to it.

------
BaptN
Genuine question here, the post ends with "In that case, you may wish to talk
to us (offline) about our consulting rates.".

Without bothering the author, I'm really curious what the price range would be
for consulting with recognized open-source maintainers, once you reach them
offline ... Anyone willing to try a guess ?

(I'm a consultant myself, thinking about my own fees ... but I have zero
significant contributions to Free Software as Arnold Robbin does, just curious
!)

~~~
LeifCarrotson
I've seen that Stallman does consulting at $250/hr, which is interesting when
you consider that I, a no-name from a no-name state school with 8 years'
experience, am billed to my company's clients at more than 1/3 the rate of
someone who's effectively a celebrity.

~~~
jedieaston
He probably doesn't actually work for that rate though, since he rarely
programs anymore and mostly does evangelist work for the FSF.

~~~
LukeShu
RMS was removed as president of the FSF in September 2019. He is still head of
the GNU project, but is no longer part of the FSF.

------
richardjennings
I am starting to wonder why Open Source became the standard as apposed to
alternatives. Clearly a love/passion/aptitude/... puts people in a position
where they contribute time and expertise for some/no reward that matches a
cost/benefit. The article list the truth behind volunteering and the
consequent constraints.

Why is it that way though?

The planet has public money advancing major scientific interests in an
organised though potentially politically aggravated mechanism. Would a lack of
action on a subject of possible national security be tolerated due to the
rights of volunteers? How about international security?

Is it politics/government/non scientific interests that make open source the
most successful answer to by the people for the people?

------
ericax
While open source software really shines when lots of contributions work
together and when everyone is polite, understanding, and well-reasoned, not
every project is like that.

Sometimes it's hard or even demoralizing for the developer to handle all the
feature requests that do not take into account the constraints. I've seen some
GitHub issues like that and it's disheartening.

