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"Forking" Greatest Danger of Adopting Open Source?
TTL0 writes "In response to recent descisions in favour of Open Source in Israel (see here
and here),Dr. Robert M. Sauer of the Department of Economics at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and president of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. has written a article saying that the hidden costs of OS add up to a higher TCO. However, The greater danger Sauer writes, is that of a OS project forking. "The forking of open-source projects occurs when passionate disputes between open-source software developers over product design lead to the splintering of projects into a multitude of varieties. With proprietary software, forking generally does not take place since development is centralized within a firm and disciplined by market forces."" I've always seen Forking as something of a blessing... it's the abandoned projects are the ones that are in danger.
If forking is acceptable in religion (notwithstanding "mine is the One True" etc.), it should be acceptable in software.
The Sky is falling!!! Watch for falling Bits.
Havent we had enough of this "dangers of open source" crap?
"the hidden costs of OS add up to a higher TCO"
The hidden costs of Operating System? Some people call Free/Libre Open-Source software FLOSS, FOSS or just OSS. I just spell it out and use the words to avoid confusion.
And I'm genuinely sick of people using terms like "hidden costs" and "TCO". Please, just drop this fad-ish jargon. Okay fine, you can use "hidden costs" if you must.
Forking can be detrimental to a project. Why, just because some jokers forked the tree, chimpanzees have failed to take over the world.
What's more, so much redundant effort is going to the forked project. P. Troglodytes and H. Sapiens share over 97% common code base, and yet the splitters couldn't be bothered to add a few new features to the chimp. Nooooo, they just had to start their own little project instead of working with the existing code base. If this trend keeps up, open source is doomed.
Given the sexual habits of most people involved in software development, I think we can be confident there will be very little forking.
Probably not very much spooning, either.
Forking MUST be bad. I am a hardware guy, but I hear the software guys talking about the "forking" software all the time, and from their tone of voice, it does not sound kind. They are always talking about the forking compiler, the forking debugger, etc.
At least I think they are saying "forking."
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
OSS forks.
Windows borks.
Apple is for dorks.
Now choose!
(Wonder if I'll be modded down by mac users with no sense of humor...)
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Thank goodness no link was posted... how could we sensibly comment on it if we had RTFAed?
Forking does provide choice, but too many splits can lead to too many dilluted or feature-less versions versus a relatively singular tree which would include features from all contributors.
In that case, it's not called forking, it's called job security.
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Forking is part of everything I hate about open source. I hate the forking bugs, I hate the forking users, I hate the forking beards, I hate the whole forking thing!
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
I can count the number of significant projects that have forked on one hand and still have a finger free for Darl McBride. Sure, forking happens all of the damn time with silly stuff like MP3 players and web-based BBS software, but aside from the BSDs, when was the last time you heard of a significant infrastructure project forking?
Only the gcc/egcs split comes to mind, but the two were folded back into one tree and the result was a better compiler. There's the StarOffice/OpenOffice split, but that's also largely collaborative. Most other forks are dead ends that wither away quietly, no matter how loud and vociferous the original argument was.
This is just more Microsoft FUD coming from one of the most Microsoft-saturated countries on the planet.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
...CRAP
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.