Re:When GitHub kills Open Source
by yummyfajitas on Friday January 13, 2012 @11:25AM
(#3461158)
Indeed. Here is one of my forks:
https://github.com/stucchio/django-tyrant-cache
It's the standard tokyo tyrant cache backend for django with a bugfix (it reconnects if the connection dies). The pull request was made in august last year, and I've heard nothing back. Oh well.
On the other hand, my connections to tokyo tyrant don't crap out, and I've got a nice permalinked submodule in my main project. (Or I did before I switched to redis.)
Is this a failed fork? By the definition of the author, sure. But it's made me happy. And if someone else needs this bugfix, it will probably make them happy too.
Define "failed fork". GitHub&al, propelled by decentralized VCSs, definitely changed the meaning of 'fork'. Previously, creating a fork was a serious act, taken only when you did not have access to the central repository and had to do modifications, or when a given project was going nowhere anymore, or not where or how you wanted. A fork was either a rebirth or a schism.
But that changed.
A fork is now part of the global workflow. One forks and submits a pull request almost like one would checkout, diff and mail a patch previously. The definition of a 'failed fork' is therefore wildly different since the very notion of fork evolved dramatically. Forks never submitting pull requests have their own use so you can't even qualify a fork based on that.