Re: Is Ubuntu a debian derivative or is it a fork?
On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 08:21:01PM -0500, John Hasler wrote:
> mag writes:
> > Forks in OSS do have drawbacks, this is why they are generally frowned
> > upon.
>
> I agree that they may have drawbacks, but I don't believe that they can
> cause the sort of damage that the Unix wars caused.
Not only that, but we're developing some quite sophisticated tools to
manage them. Darcs is my favorite example of this, with its "every
checkout is a fork, and every push is a merge" way of operation.
Quite powerful and elegant, IMHO.
I no longer subscribe to the "forking is inherently bad" idea.
Cooperative forking can, and often has, been a Good Thing. Example:
baz, which is more or less a fork of tla. In some ways, it serves as
an "unstable" tla, where new ideas get tested.
-- John
Reply to: