"Forking" Greatest Danger of Adopting Open Source?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Tuesday December 9, 2003 @02:34AM from the forking-is-better-than-abandonment dept.

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.

3 of 471 comments (clear)

Religion by satyap · 2003-12-09 02:36 · Score: 5, Funny

If forking is acceptable in religion (notwithstanding "mine is the One True" etc.), it should be acceptable in software.
The dangers of forking by Dr.+Photo · 2003-12-09 02:47 · Score: 5, Funny

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.
Re:Cluck the chicken says... by azaris · 2003-12-09 02:54 · Score: 5, Funny

Havent we had enough of this "dangers of open source" crap?
Hear hear. Now let's get back to the objective "open-source perl-hack saves world"-reporting.