At 11:54 AM +1000 on 7/26/99, Adrian Sutton wrote:
>Adrian: Yes, forking has great potential and can solve many problems, but it
>creates a few problems as well. Each time you fork, you divide the
>workforce so the development of the project slows.
To what extent do you divide it? You divide yourself off of it, and whoever
else believes you. If you had no good reason to fork, no one would come
with you. You would only divide the development team to the extent you had
a reasonable idea.
Let me ask this: If instead these people were told that they could not
fork, would they still contribute? I'd argue "no, or at least not nearly as
much."
>Eventually, the majority
>of users decide which is better and the group can reform, but a great deal
>of time and effort is wasted.
You assume that were no forking allowed, that the peopel would still all
stay. I'd argue that is silly: If they hate the direction of OpenCard,
they're not going to help.
If someone can fork, they might follow him.
>This is not to say that forking shouldn't be
>allowed, it should,
Good.
>but we should not use it as our only means of dealing
>with problems. It should be almost a last resort.
I don't believe it would ever be: Forking is a lot of work. Of course
people would rather discuss than take on maintaining 10mb of code by
themselves.
I don't think every little argument should be resolved by a fork. But when
there is a difference in opinion which can not be resolved, I believe a
fork is a good thing.
