
Volapük: A Cautionary Tale for Language Communities - anewhnaccount
https://tonyarcieri.com/volapuk-a-cautionary-tale-for-any-language-community
======
fernly
He mentions Lojban[0] but ironically fails to note that Lojban itself is a
fork of Loglan[1].

It came about because the late Dr. James Cooke Brown, inventor of Loglan,
tried to keep tight control over its development by claiming intellectual
property rights over it. However, Brown did not move fast enough toward
finalizing, formalizing and documenting the language to satisfy some of the
enthusiastic and inventive community that had formed around it.

A group of those enthusiasts kept the basic concepts and syntax of Loglan
(which they deemed not copyrightable) and created a new basic vocabulary to
replace the words that Brown or the Loglan Institute could claim ownership of.
(Reminiscent of the IP disputes over APIs versus implementations.) The result
was Lojban, which continues to have a small community and a collection of
translated documents and tutorials.

[0] [https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Lojban](https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Lojban)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan)

~~~
jflatow
Which makes me think that the lesson of this story is not "avoid forking at
all costs", but that building anything universal is a fragile endeavor.
Anybody can just come along and obsolete your status with respect to that
goal. As for being forgotten, it seems inevitable, if universality is your
only selling point.

------
Impl0x
One of my favorite things I've learned during my time studying Esperanto is
the word "volapukaĵo", which is constructed from "volapuk" as the root and
means "nonsense".

"Tio estas volapukaĵo al mi" is the Esperanto equivalent of "It's all Greek to
me!"

~~~
schoen
I've heard it claimed that there's an analogous verb volapuki 'to babble, talk
nonsense' (but never seen someone use it).

~~~
klipt
Esperanto is very flexible about transforming verbs/nouns/adjectives into one
another, so probably.

Adjective would be volapuka (nonsensical)?

Adverb would be volapuke (nonsensically?)

------
bluejekyll
> lesson to be learned here: any language is only as strong as its community

Or maybe it's better lesson is that no one tries to force the direction of the
language. English is a bastard language, no one "controls", even as much as
our grammar school teachers try to force us to use the proper form. I always
find it interesting that many people who learn English as a second language
often understand and know the formal rules of the language better than those
of us who've spoken it natively.

The examples that the OP point out are top down choices made by "leaders" of
the community. Those leaders may have created the original programming
language, but then fail to realize that it is not they that control it, it is
the community. And communities often don't want to be forced in one direction
or another. What they like is for things to be grass roots, everyone in the
community recognizes the issue, a proposal is put forward, and everyone then
agrees and progress is made.

This is one reason that I'm enjoying Rust's process, example: try!(..) was a
macro based bandaid over the unwieldy nature of the strong error Result type
in the language, it's usage has created code which is ugly and verbose. Enter
Swift with its ? syntax and everyone recognizes that this is a less verbose
and cleaner way to represent the same concept. So Rust is _in the process of_
adopting ? (It's in nightly now I believe). I don't think there is much
controversy here, and the community recognizes the importance of adopting this
language change (I read through the RFC and don't remember anyone against it,
just differences on the scope of its meaning).

In English there have been similar things, and the controllers have always
tried to stop their usage, "ain't" is a great example of that. English
teachers across the US have always tried to stop its usage as a _fake_ low
class word, but it's just too good and they ain't going to stop it.

~~~
yongjik
> I always find it interesting that many people who learn English as a second
> language often understand and know the formal rules of the language better
> than those of us who've spoken it natively.

I believe that's true for any natural language. To a native speaker, its rules
are so natural (almost as breathing) that they hardly ever think about it.
Frequently they don't even realize there's a question of picking the right
form, because their brain does that job for them.

It's always the foreign learners who have to memorize these rules (which are
never "natural" to them).

~~~
wolfgke
> > I always find it interesting that many people who learn English as a
> second language often understand and know the formal rules of the language
> better than those of us who've spoken it natively.

> I believe that's true for any natural language. To a native speaker, its
> rules are so natural (almost as breathing) that they hardly ever think about
> it. Frequently they don't even realize there's a question of picking the
> right form, because their brain does that job for them.

I personally rather think that most other languages have a much more
complicated grammar than English. So many people learning English as second
language are much more used to think of languages in terms of grammar. I, for
example, also think of German (my native language) a lot in terms of grammar -
OK, the reason might also be that I'm a really mathematical-minded person and
heard some lectures about natural language processing (NLP), which further
trained me in this kind of thinking (but I also remember that I already did so
at the end of primary school).

I can say that some of the more obscure grammar rules of German are also not
completely natural to many German speakers. But since in Germany at least in
more educated circles there is a culture that using wrong grammar (as a native
speaker) leaves a bad impression, you better know some rules to be able to
explain why something was right or wrong. To give a common class examples,
where a wrong dative instead of a correct genitive is used:

"dem Nachbar sein Sohn" (wrong, since for ownership you have to use a genitive
and not a dative; roughly translated with "the neighbour his son"). Correct is
"des Nachbars Sohn" ("the neighbour's son"; but this form sounds rather
educated in German in opposite to English)

If you want to sound less stilted than "des Nachbars Sohn", you use "der Sohn
des Nachbars" (Remark: if you want to troll Germans, ask them whether "der
Sohn des Nachbars" or "der Sohn des Nachbarn" is correct. Answer is: both are,
cf. [http://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/sprachratgeber/beugung-
von-...](http://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/sprachratgeber/beugung-von-
nachbar)). This uses the correct genitive. Less educated people again use a
wrong dative combined with "von": "der Sohn von dem Nachbarn", which is
somewhere between very colloquial and wrong, because for ownership you use
genitive (both examples would be translated with "the son of the neighbour" in
English, but the distinction between these two constructions can't be
expressed in English).

Another problem is that there exist some verbs that have a genitive object
(these often sound very educated), among these is "gedenken" ("to
commemorate"). Because these verbs are not used so often, many less educated
people use them wrongly with a dative (which appears more natural, but is
wrong). For example "ich gedenke den Verstorbenen" is wrong; correct is "ich
gedenke der Verstorbenen" ("I commemorate the deceased", where this
grammatical subtlety again cannot be expressed in English).

TLDR: I rather see two reasons: 1. Other languages have a more complicated
grammar than English, so that native speakers of other languages think more in
terms of grammar. 2. At least in Germany in educated circles there is a
culture that using wrong grammar leaves a bad impression. So you better know
the rules why something is right or wrong.

~~~
schoen
> Another problem is that there exist some verbs that have a genitive object
> (these often sound very educated), among these is "gedenken" ("to
> commemorate"). Because these verbs are not used so often, many less educated
> people use them wrongly with a dative (which appears more natural, but is
> wrong). For example "ich gedenke den Verstorbenen" is wrong; correct is "ich
> gedenke der Verstorbenen" ("I commemorate the deceased", where this
> grammatical subtlety again cannot be expressed in English).

I was never taught about such verbs and am glad to know about them, but I
think you have a typo in your example; the mistaken dative form should be "dem
Verstorbenen", not "den Verstorbenen".

~~~
wolfgke
> I was never taught about such verbs and am glad to know about them

As I said: Most of the verbs requiring a genitive object are erudite and
sometimes sound old-fashioned. The most important ones are

verb + genitive object: bedürfen, erwehren (old-fashioned; you normally rather
use "er wehrte sich gegen den Angriff" instead of "er erwehrte sich des
Angriffs"), gedenken

verb + genitive object + accusative object: anklagen, beschuldigen,
bezichtigen (a little old-fashioned), überführen, verdächtigen, zeihen (old-
fashioned)

Pro tip: If you really want to write German texts that are supposed to sound
ancient (for example when you write fantasy literature) combine verbs
requiring genitive objects with the outdated genitives (mein, dein, sein, ihr)
instead of (meiner, deiner, seiner, ihrer) of the personal pronouns (ich, du,
er/es, sie (singular and plural)). For example:

"doch bei dem Ringe soll er mein gedenken" (I would translate this very
loosely with "if he sees the ring he shall commemorate me")

(from the opera "Lohengrin" by Richard Wagner:
[http://www.rwagner.net/libretti/lohengrin/e-lohen-a3s3.html](http://www.rwagner.net/libretti/lohengrin/e-lohen-a3s3.html))

> the mistaken dative form should be "dem Verstorbenen", not "den
> Verstorbenen".

sbmassey explained it correctly. If you are really interested:

"der Verstorbenen" (genitive): either (female & singular) or plural

"dem Verstorbenen" (dative): (male & singular)

"den Verstorbenen" (dative)": plural

~~~
schoen
Thanks for the examples!

I was taking "deceased" as singular rather than plural (although it could have
been either) so I parsed "den Verstorbenen" as the accusative singular rather
than dative plural.

------
lisivka
Russian (Russish, русский) language is example of success of artificial
language.

It was language of books, used mainly in Orthodox churches, like Latin in
Western Europe, but now it is spoken by hundreds of millions.

~~~
dragandj
What language the Russians spoke at that time then?

~~~
lisivka
Russians (Great Russians, Russish, русские, великоросы) were speaking their
own native languages. For example, Putin is Uyghur. He is Russian and his
native language is Russian, but Russian is not native language for Uyghurs.

The longer explanation:

There is three kinds of "Russians". Rus`, Rusyns, Russians.

Rus` lived at Baltic Sea. Rus` means "red". They were warriors, i.e. their
life was to fight, trade, and collect taxes. Their native language is unknown
(probably, Old Norse). At times of Great Epidemic, they left their city (now
known as Old Russa, Старая Русса) and "concurred" South and started to govern
it, so territory of current Ukraine got name "Rus`". Slavish colonists at
these territories got name "Rusyns" (русины) (see below). At time of expansion
of Rus`, North people was concurred and paid taxes to Rus` (Лаврентеевская
летопись, ст 4. об. «А вот другие народы, дающие дань Руси: чудь, меря, весь,
мурома, черемисы, мордва, пермь, печера, ямь, литва, зимигола, корсь, нарова,
ливонцы, - эти говорят на своих языках, они - потомство Иафета, живущее в
северных странах.»). They got name "Russish" (русские). This was time of
"Great Rus`", so North Russians are also known as "Great Russians"
(Великоросы), while South Russians (Slavs) are also known as "Little (Core)
Russians" (Малоросы).

Summary:

    
    
      * Rus` - possibly warriors union or Varangians, native language (probably): Old Norse.
      * Rusyns (Ukrainians) - Slavish colonists governed by Rus`, native language: Slavish.
      * Russish (Russians) - native Europeans, native language: many, probably Finno-Ugric and others.
    

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus'_people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus'_people)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staraya_Russa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staraya_Russa)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthenia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthenia)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus'_%28name%29#From_Rus.27_to...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus'_%28name%29#From_Rus.27_to_Russia)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-
Ugric_peoples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Ugric_peoples)

NOTE: -in, -yn, -an means "he/she" (modified "он" \- "he"), -yny, -iny, -any,
-ini, etc. - "they" (modified "они" \- they) ("y" as in lynx). So Rysyn
(русин) means "he is Rus`", Rysyny (русини) means "they are (people of) Rus`".
Russians means "they are Russia", "россияне", but selfname of Russians is
Russish ("русские").

Moreover, Russia is Greek name of Rus`, given by Catherine II (born in
Prussia) to Moscovia, because Russia was used at West as name of past parts of
Great Russia. Nikolai Kostomarov wrote something like "LOL, we are Russians
now" at time of rename (ДЂло въ томъ, что названіе Руси укрЂпилось издревле за
южнорусскимъ народомъ. Названіе не возникаетъ безъ факта. Нельзя навязать
народу ни съ того, ни съ сего какое-нибудь имя. Это могло приходить въ голову
только такимъ мудрецамъ, противъ которыхъ мы недавно писали (1) и которые намъ
сообщили прекурьёзную новость, какъ Екатерина II, высочайшимъ повелЂніемъ,
даровала Московскому народу имя Русскаго и запретила ему употреблять древнее
свое имя — Московитяне.)

~~~
iopq
-in is actually a a possessive suffix

мамин (mamin) - mother's кошкин дом (koshkin dom) - "Cat's house"

it also refers to people

болгарин (bolgarin) - Bulgarian боярин (boyarin) - boyar

the etymology of Rus is from Scandinavia, see Fin. Ruotsi "Sweden",
Ruotsalainen "Swede"

~~~
diminish
And what is the etymology of Moscow, Yauza, and Oka, Volga and rivers... ?

~~~
iopq
Moscow comes from the locative на Москви (na Moskvi), while the original form
is *Москы. It's using the locative because the hydronym (name of the river) is
older than the name of the city. So the city comes from the name of the river.

Further, Lith. mazgóti "wash, splash", Latin mergō "dive"

Yauza probably from ya- and -(v)uz (vyazat' \- to tie, bind, knit, uzel -
knot) so maybe something like "the river that ties"

There are several etymologies for Oka, it probably has a form of oko (eye) in
it, maybe from a Baltic source.

Volga has the same root as vlaga, vologa - "wetness"

~~~
lisivka
I 90% sure that "Volga" means "(Vol) ... (Ga) Water/River", "Oka" means "(O)
... (Ka) Water/River", "Moskva" means "(Mos) ... (Kva) Water/River" in native
language of people lived there, because "Kvas" means "Water".

~~~
iopq
kvas comes from kvasit' \- to make sour

------
bluejekyll
> Volapük was a hybrid of English, German, and French

I found this funny, because that's basically what English is.

~~~
yborg
English is more of a mongrel than that even, there are substantial additions
from Latin and Greek as well.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Origins_of_English_PieCha...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Origins_of_English_PieChart.svg)

~~~
Grue3
Name any (natural) language that's "pure". English is hardly unique in that
respect.

~~~
jrochkind1
No languages are pure, although some languages in modern times have official
national bodies trying to keep them as 'pure' as possible (like French),
they're still not 'pure' in any way.

But English is especially hybrid. Some think that contributed to it's global
popularity as a second language, but I think it's probably more just a
coincidence that England and then the U.S. were such global powers, and not
related to characteristics of English.

~~~
jmfayard
> I think it's probably more just a coincidence that England and then the U.S.
> were such global powers, and not related to characteristics of English

... and if you want to argue otherwise, you will have to explain why russian
had such good linguistic characteristics in east-europe between 1945 and 1989,
and not so much since then :)

------
chillacy
Esperanto seems to have learned its lesson and made itself un-changable, but
forkable.

> The only basis of the Esperanto language binding on all Esperantists, which
> no one has the right to change, is the little work Foundation of Esperanto.
> If anyone deviates from the rules and models given in the said work, he can
> never justify himself with the words "thus desires or advises the author of
> Esperanto".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_evolution_of_Esperanto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_evolution_of_Esperanto)

Changing the language too much is "kontraŭ fundamento"

~~~
mcguire
I have seen complaints about "aeroporto" vs. "flugaveno" (?) though.

~~~
D-Coder
"Flughaveno" (flight-port). Similarly "flugmaŝino" (flight-machine) has
generally disappeared for "aviadilo" (sort of "aviation-er"). Some of the
vocabulary has drifted with technological and social changes. For example
"svati," to matchmake, this has pretty much disappeared. But the grammar has
changed very little.

------
chrisfosterelli
> there was another constructed language which once claimed nearly a million
> followers, making it the most popular constructed language of all time

Maybe a nitpick, but Esperanto (which essentially replaced Volapuk) is
estimated to have around 2 to 10 million speakers and is generally considered
to be the most common constructed language now [1].

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto)

------
nxzero
Fall of languages is not bad thing. For example, without the fall of Volapük,
it's very possible that Esperanto would not have taken off, since much of the
early growth of Esperanto was a result of Volapük speakers looking for a new
constructed language.

If a community lacks reasoning, that is the real issue, not major battles,
which might just means there is in fact a valid reasoning to split the
community.

Keeping a community together just for the sake of doing so is a recipe for
failure.

------
brudgers
Language home page: [http://volapük.com/](http://volapük.com/)

~~~
tormeh
I'm fluent in English, know a fair bit of German and some very basic French
and I can't understand any Volapük. If Europe's ever going to speak the same
language it's going to be through the languages growing closer, eliminating
different spellings of existing loanwords and creating new ones that are
universal. None of the knowledge I have of European languages carry over to
Volapük, at least in terms of vocabulary. That, to me, looks like a mistake on
Volapük's part.

~~~
schoen
You would probably have a very different experience with Interlingua.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua)

(The weirdest thing for me about it as a Latin and Portuguese speaker is that
adjectives aren't inflected for number, so you have phrases like "servicios
tangibile" and "contributiones actual", which sound kind of bizarre throughout
the Romance milieu, where the adjectives would have to be pluralized too.)

You can see some sample texts at

[http://www.interlingua.com/](http://www.interlingua.com/)

or for example

[http://www.interlingua.com/libros/](http://www.interlingua.com/libros/)

Interlingua is very Latin and Romance-heavy, so if your experience is more
with German, it may not feel as familiar, but it's almost sure to be easier
than Volapük for anyone familiar with multiple European languages. :-)

~~~
wtbob
> Interlingua is very Latin and Romance-heavy, so if your experience is more
> with German, it may not feel as familiar, but it's almost sure to be easier
> than Volapük for anyone familiar with multiple European languages. :-)

Well, if at least one of those multiple European languages is a Romance
tongue, sure. But if someone speaks fluent Manx, English, Icelandic and
Norwegian, he'll probably have more than a little trouble with it …

~~~
schoen
It would definitely be quite a bit harder, but all of those languages will
have had some degree of Latin and Romance borrowing so they'll still confer at
least a little benefit.

------
jpatokal
Well, there's also the fact that Volapuk is rather hideous and imports most of
the worst features of its source languages wholesale. Nouns and pronouns
inflect into multiple cases (genetive, dative, accusative...), verbs have
literally thousands of conjugations, gender is retained, etc. Even Esperanto
is often accused of Latin bias, but Volapuk takes this to a whole new (well,
old) level.

------
pipio21
At the time Latin was as universal in Europe as English is today. The Eulers
and Newtons and Descartes spoke latin, in fact you can read it, today:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Pri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica)

Later German became the language of the philosophers and scientists and
English the language of the practical engineering.

English was not or is not gradually becoming a universal language, but
suddenly after the US of A won the WWII(and everybody else lost, for example
British lost their empire).

After the war the US banned all scientific knowledge in German, and forced the
use of English. Remember they took half the scientists of Germany with
them(that later created their space program), the other half were taken by the
Russians.

In (inland)Europe we used to measure height of a plane over ground in meters
before and during WWII. Kilometers for horizontal distance. When
(North)Americans won it became the ruler of the world and imposed horizontal
distance in miles, and height in feet.

I speak several languages because I love to travel and it is completely
different when you speak the native language. It is not a good idea or polite
to only speak one language thinking that people should talk your language
because it is "universal", which usually means your country has intelligent
nuclear weapons and drones that can draw any other country on their knees(or
so you believe).

What I mean is that any empire will end, like any other empire has ended in
the past, and things change over time.

I believe the Universal language of the future will be machines translating
with small delay and helping people learn other languages much faster.

~~~
13of40
> It is not a good idea or polite to only speak one language thinking that
> people should talk your language because it is "universal", which usually
> means your country has intelligent nuclear weapons and drones that can draw
> any other country on their knees(or so you believe).

What's not polite is being prejudiced against an entire continent of people
you've never met. If I happen to ask whether you speak English, I'm probably
just trying to find the cheese aisle.

------
susan_hall
This is certainly relevant for Lisp programmers:

"Contrarily, major schisms or breakdowns in the relationships and development
of a language and its community are big warning signs that should make you
think twice about the future of a language."

Related reading includes "The Lisp Curse":

[http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html](http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html)

And note that "Why Lisp Did Not and Never Will Gain Enough Traction" offers
this alternative explanation:

"Since there is so little pre choice, the glue that is supposed to hold a
community together is too weak to draw enough people that would build up a
momentum."

[http://kresimirbojcic.com/2012/08/14/why-lisp-did-not-and-
ne...](http://kresimirbojcic.com/2012/08/14/why-lisp-did-not-and-never-will-
gain-enough-traction.html)

~~~
wtbob
Those are definitely some interesting ideas, but I'm uncertain to what extent
they're actually true. I think that Common Lisp really _does_ make choices for
its programmers, and asks that they develop in a fashion such that their code
can easily live with others (notably, the places where it doesn't — e.g. the
common readtable — are nowadays regarded as mistakes). One of my several
issues with Scheme is that historically it has made so few choices ('you have
lists — develop whatever data structures you need!' & 'you have call/cc —
develop whatever control structures you need!'). But that's a problem of
Scheme (less so, in recent years), not of Lisp or the closely-related (to
Scheme) Racket.

There is definitely something to be said about how easy it is to get things
done in Lisp: 'Making Scheme object-oriented is a sophomore homework
assignment. On the other hand, adding object orientation to C requires the
programming chops of Bjarne Stroustrup' (from The Lisp Curse).

------
iopq
But as an author of the Slovianski pan-Slavic language, I don't feel like this
is a bad thing. Everyone who contributes on the forum has their own dialect:

[http://s8.zetaboards.com/Slovianski/forum/38184/](http://s8.zetaboards.com/Slovianski/forum/38184/)

I prefer merging y and i, for example (although I don't always follow it
myself, I experiment a lot)

------
rurban
Citing the perl 6 fork leading to the decline of the whole language(s) is very
interesting. What the author doesn't know is that not only perl6 forked off,
also 4 other perl5 forks appeared during the last year, which is a strong sign
of an already dying community and language. I'm one of the forkers (cperl).

For me forking was a necessity since the perl5 community was not able to come
up with any improvement at all since the author left 15 years ago. It rather
managed to erode the codebase and the management (the perl5 "asshole"
problem). "Faith" into the developers capabilities is a now a mandatory code
of conduct point, even if the said devs did nothing to prove their
capabilities in the last 15 years. Using religious arguments to hold people
together might have worked in the middle ages and in a post-modern community.
(perl is one, go figure).

On the contrary the perl 6 and perl 5 leaders are making cynical jokes about
their future, to the end that a new backend or a new fork will make the
language and the community stronger.
([https://youtu.be/gmmVGPdcItM](https://youtu.be/gmmVGPdcItM) 2016 - "The
Ongoing Disaster That Is Perl 5‎" \- Ricardo Signes) Which is of course wrong.
We don't need Volapük and the Kerckhoff fork to show this.

There are many bad examples in the BSD land, the latest DragonflyBSD, and many
more on debian forks.

Now to the arguments why to fork:

* perl5 argues that forking (experiments) are good, and if successful will lead to "stealing" the good parts.

This never happened so far with perl5. They rather blocked competing forks to
submit bugfixes and discuss critical failures upstream. While the forks manage
to enhance security, performance and add many wanted features (which were not
added in the last 15 years since they were designed by perl6), upstream did
nothing. It didn't even merge the security fixes.

If a community is that broken, it needs to fork to be able to survive.

However with parrot, the perl6 backend, it worked fine. The unfriendly fork
(MoarVM) eventually replaced parrot, using a much simpler architecture. This
was an easy fork, because they could simply replace it upstream. No need to
persuade the community to switch over.

* If a product is broken beyond repair, make a new one. People will switch eventually.

Do people use better ssl libraries over openssl? Some do, but most don't. E.g
for perl there's not a single TLS library binding other than to
OpenSSL/NetSSLeay. No boringssl, no libressl, no PolarSSL (mbed TLS), no NSS.
For crypto no libsodium.

Did HHVM survive? Well, the php devs eventually got off its ass and made an
ever better version with PHP7. They didn't steal much, they rather re-
architectured the whole mess. This is the best example of a successful fork
which strengthened everybody. Pressure. The GCC fork under schmorp to use the
new intel Pentium intrinsics was also eventually successful.

I cannot say much about Python 3, only that the inherent VM problems where not
solved at all and only the forks (pypy, Graal, mypy) are able to overcome that
technical debt partially. ruby has it's number of forks but is still paying
for it's ruby on rails meta-architecture disaster.

