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FOSS "just fork it" delusion

hamishcampbell.com

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Re: FOSS "just fork it" delusion

#71

Post by kelnos »

Hard disagree... sorta. Or rather, I think the author is just looking at it the wrong way.

Most of the time when I see (or give) a "just fork it" response, it's a dismissal of an entitled user who believes that they are owed unpaid labor from a maintainer.

If you're working at some big company and are using open source software, and need a new feature or bug fixed RIGHT NOW, sometimes your best bet is to make an internal fork, implement it yourself, submit it upstream, and continue to maintain your fork until it's accepted upstream and there's a new public release.

I've done this several times in the past, and it's been fine. Sure, it's work to maintain a private fork, but it's usually a hell of a lot less work than implementing all the same functionality from scratch. And I'm getting paid to do that work, so it's fine.

Yes, sometimes "just fork it" is a response given to a random user who doesn't know much about software, is frustrated, and just wants to go about their day. It sucks for them to get a response like that, but really what it is is a brusque education in how the sausage is made.

I think the most rare "just fork it" is due to actual disagreements over project direction from peers. I think this particular case is what this article is really about, but, honestly, it barely warrants discussion. Yes, it's hard to build and sustain a community around a fork. That's life. A maintainer telling you "just fork it" in this instance is implicitly reminding you of this fact, and to consider the implications of striking out in your own. You may choose to do so anyway, and that is the beauty of open source.

Re: FOSS "just fork it" delusion

#72

Post by andinsky »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #57
bookofsleepyjoe wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If almost everybody thinks you're so insufferable that they don't want to interact with you, chances are, you are. This has been a function of societies for as long as societies have existed, and addressing it requires honest reflection. In this case: "why is there such a huge overlap between people competent and willing to host federated social media servers, and people who don't want to be around me?" Unfortunately…

> If almost everybody thinks you're so insufferable that they don't want to interact with you, chances are, you are.

Or they disagree with your views so intensely that they want you silenced.

That's what happened with https://spinster.xyz defederation. A group of male administrators of other Fediverse instances took umbrage at the women-centered, feminist discussion there and between them defederated hundreds of servers away from Spinster.

This was on top of misogynistic attacks and attempts to deplatform. Some unfortunately successful, like the removal of the Spinster app from the Google Play Store and F-Droid.

Re: FOSS "just fork it" delusion

#73

Post by boltzmann-brain »

lapcat wrote: post #48
boltzmann-brain wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that would turn it into a witch hunt drama post. it's good that this sort of thing wasn't included.

> it's good that this sort of thing wasn't included. Is it good that the article has inspired mostly "the author is wrong" comments, more so than even the usual for HN?

a tiny cohort's opinion does not change the truthfulness of a statement

Re: FOSS "just fork it" delusion

#74

Post by boltzmann-brain »

cornholio wrote: post #50
boltzmann-brain wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in 30+ years of software development i've never heard "just fork it" or "you're welcome to fork it" used as an encouragement and i've heard it as a dismissal countless times. the article is spot on, and your interpretation of the described real-life situation is a rosy-tinted hypothetical at best.

It's dismissive because most of the requests open source developers get need to be dismissed. " Where can I send some cash for your hard work " is much rarer than " Here's my very complex edge use case that I need to support ASAP, I think it's quite shameful you don't support this already must not take you more than 5 minutes, come on people do it already my clients are waiting ".

see, that's the problem, you immediately jump to a combative stance + assume the current maintainer is always right, which is exactly how the situations i presented happen in the first place

Re: FOSS "just fork it" delusion

#75

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

andinsky wrote: post #72
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If almost everybody thinks you're so insufferable that they don't want to interact with you, chances are, you are. This has been a function of societies for as long as societies have existed, and addressing it requires honest reflection. In this case: "why is there such a huge overlap between people competent and willing to host federated social media servers, and people who don't want to be around me?" Unfortunately…

> If almost everybody thinks you're so insufferable that they don't want to interact with you, chances are, you are. Or they disagree with your views so intensely that they want you silenced. That's what happened with https://spinster.xyz defederation. A group of male administrators of other Fediverse instances took umbrage at the women-centered, feminist discussion there and between them defederated hundreds of serv…

> Or they disagree with your views so intensely that they want you silenced. That's what happened with https://spinster.xyz defederation.

You're referring to an instance in which nobody was silenced, and all that happened was that some people chose not to interact with other people. That's totally okay! You don't have to interact with folks you think are insufferable.

> This was on top of misogynistic attacks

Unfortunately, most social networks are full of misogynists, racists, etc. As the size of the network grows, the probability of it including a jerk approaches 100%. In fact, this is one of the reasons someone might choose to run their own network in which they don't have to associate with said jerks. Based on a cursory search of your example, it looks like a lot of folks felt that spinster.xyz wasn't worth voluntarily associating with, perhaps because there was a high proportions of jerks.

Re: FOSS "just fork it" delusion

#76

Post by boltzmann-brain »

andinsky wrote: post #72
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If almost everybody thinks you're so insufferable that they don't want to interact with you, chances are, you are. This has been a function of societies for as long as societies have existed, and addressing it requires honest reflection. In this case: "why is there such a huge overlap between people competent and willing to host federated social media servers, and people who don't want to be around me?" Unfortunately…

> If almost everybody thinks you're so insufferable that they don't want to interact with you, chances are, you are. Or they disagree with your views so intensely that they want you silenced. That's what happened with https://spinster.xyz defederation. A group of male administrators of other Fediverse instances took umbrage at the women-centered, feminist discussion there and between them defederated hundreds of serv…

the propensity for fediverse admins to act like tiny dictators is extremely worrying. i haven't seen a good solution to this sort of thing honestly. ultimately it also means that you have to walk on eggshells and force yourself into an impossible shape lest you offend someone's very special interest that you didn't even know you were lightly brushing up against (for example, you say "clanker" and therefore the owner of some instance immediately and without asking thinks you are against cyborgs, and they identify as a cyborg, therefore you are a bigot, and you get banned without warning and all your friendships are gone - didn't happen to me, but i've seen it happen to someone else). one of the worst things about this is that you can't have a really strong disagreement with people who are popular on some instance because social inner circles form very easily on tiny instances, and all of them are tiny, especially compared to non-federated, centralized networks where brushing up against inner circles that have connections to admins is much much less likely.

Re: FOSS "just fork it" delusion

#77

Post by lapcat »

boltzmann-brain wrote: post #73
lapcat wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's good that this sort of thing wasn't included. Is it good that the article has inspired mostly "the author is wrong" comments, more so than even the usual for HN?

a tiny cohort's opinion does not change the truthfulness of a statement

The point of an essay is not just to make true statements. It's also to convince readers of those statements. Thus, the way the arguments are presented by the writer, and the way that readers interpret the arguments, is crucial.

Re: FOSS "just fork it" delusion

#78

Post by boltzmann-brain »

lapcat wrote: post #77
boltzmann-brain wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a tiny cohort's opinion does not change the truthfulness of a statement

The point of an essay is not just to make true statements. It's also to convince readers of those statements. Thus, the way the arguments are presented by the writer, and the way that readers interpret the arguments, is crucial.

The readers on this website are hopefully less lazy than that

Re: FOSS "just fork it" delusion

#79

Post by boltzmann-brain »

chii wrote: post #36
boltzmann-brain wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in 30+ years of software development i've never heard "just fork it" or "you're welcome to fork it" used as an encouragement and i've heard it as a dismissal countless times. the article is spot on, and your interpretation of the described real-life situation is a rosy-tinted hypothetical at best.

> i've heard it as a dismissal countless times. a project owner have the right to be dismissive about anything regarding their own project. This is why "just fork it" is both dismissive, but also power. If you are simply asking a project owner to do somethings you wanted (often for free, i might add), then why shouldn't they be dismissive? If you have an idea for said project that the owner is dismissive about, then…

i disagree with that stance. an open source project is made up of contributions by dozens, maybe thousands of people, and they almost always only contributed to that one specific repository under that one specific person's control due to game theoretical processes that are mostly random, such as first-mover advantage, schelling points, etc. the collective effort of those people usually far outweighs what the controlling person usually contributed to ostensibly earn this sort of privilege. if talking about a FOSS repository, that person cannot be correctly described as "the owner" of that work, as the work is owned by the public, i.e. anyone who is provided access to the code. the person you are describing is merely the current maintainer of the project and the fact that most of the work they are maintaining is not theirs, but comes from the public, and is meant for the public, immediately puts a burden of responsibility on them of acting in a way that is much better than "a project owner have the right to be dismissive about anything regarding their own project" - a mode of operation which, if you pull in all the considerations i presented here, sounds childish. a much better way is to talk about this like you would about an old watch: you are merely maintaining it for future generations. that puts you in a more humble and less combative mindset.

Re: FOSS "just fork it" delusion

#80

Post by fragmede »

ssl-3 wrote: post #70
cornholio wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's dismissive because most of the requests open source developers get need to be dismissed. " Where can I send some cash for your hard work " is much rarer than " Here's my very complex edge use case that I need to support ASAP, I think it's quite shameful you don't support this already must not take you more than 5 minutes, come on people do it already my clients are waiting ".

That brings to mind one of my favorite sayings: "It may be open source, but that doesn't mean that it is afraid of money."

It would be, if it were true. I'm not going to cast the entirety of a very large community in a single light, but there are great deal of people in the open source community who are afraid of money, or more specifically, that someone else might be making some, especially using open source code that they didn't personally hand write.

Another symptom is most projects don't have an easy way to donate money to them.

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