[LAD] forking (was Re: Aeolus)

Felix Homann linuxaudio at showlabor.de
Fri Sep 20 19:52:06 UTC 2013


First, let me state that IMO the whole issue seems to me mostly like a
misunderstanding about what a 'fork' is. In the pre-github ages a fork was
more or less a way to express ones dissent, see emacs/xemacs, x.org/xfree86,
OpenOffice.org/Libreoffice. You can definitely feel bad about being forked
in this sense.

In github semantics it's more like a way to express ones interest and
appreciation. And it is a commodity for working on an existing code base,
part of the workflow endorsed by github.

(I 'forked' many projects on github. Not even one I would consider remotely
a 'fork'. They are just my personal working trees.)

As far as I can tell the oscAeoulus 'fork' seems like a working copy being
shared. (OK, the copyright annotation is very debatable but seems a bit ...
well...premature.)

Would you mind Maurizio Gavioli to play around with your code in private? I
don't think so. So why do you mind him sharing his 'playground'?

You might argue that he better not published his toying around. But then
again you possibly forced him to do so: Just imagine he gave a binary to
someone. Then by the license *you* have chosen for your code *he* is
*obliged* to share his code - no matter how good or worth publishing it is.
A 'fork' on github is a convenient way to comply with GPL licenses.

Am 19.09.2013 23:05 schrieb "Fons Adriaensen" <fons at linuxaudio.org>:
>
> > Au contraire - FOSS is all about sharing.
>
> That is one aspect of it, and one that by definition should
> go both ways.

You share your code, he shares his. Looks pretty much 'both ways'.

Regards,
Felix
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