Don't fear the fork: How DVCS aids open source development
Every once in a while, some extremely popular open source project faces what is generally regarded as one of the most painful, frightening experiences for such a project and its user community: the fork. An argument can be made that divergent evolution for purposes of specialization — such as when Knoppix burst onto the scene, based on Debian but customized for use as a LiveCD — is not a “true” fork. A fork, one might argue, is only what happens when the codebase is copied and taken in a slightly different direction because it is intended to replace (or at least compete with) the original project due to disputes between people who have different visions for it, rather than being intended to complement it by filling an otherwise empty niche.
LibreOffice is a recent example of such an acrimonious fork, though the overtones of LibreOffice’s guiding Foundation are consciously friendly. This fork is a direct result of Oracle acquiring OpenOffice.org as part of its Sun buyout.
This sort of thing typically arises in the wake of the people in charge of an open source project acting contrary to the spirit of open source development. Developers and users both rebel against this, feeling that their own personal stakes and investments in the software are being squandered by control freaks. Right or wrong, this attitude is effectively the norm amongst community-participant developers and users who are outside the reigning inner circle of basically any popular open source project.
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