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Flame Wars, Forks and Freedom

Posted by Hemos on from the controversial-ideas dept.

Eugenia Loli-Queru writes "In the news media, it is generally shown that flame wars and forks are detrimental to the growth of FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) But if we see the history of FOSS, both flame wars and forks have played a crucial role in determining both growth and direction of important projects. There are also arguments that this leads to fragmentation and marginalization. There is some truth in these arguments but there are a lot of benefits which are often overlooked. This article looks at some of the benefits of forking and flame wars through history."

10 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. It's like capitalism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Differing ideas compete, and the strong ones survive. Forks are just a different way of getting there.

  2. Like the "Linux is Obsolete" flame war of 1992? by theluckyleper · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Preserved by Google:

    Famous debate between Andy Tanenbaum and Linus Torvalds

    What OS would I be running now if Linus had just given up and said, "You're right"?

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    1. Re:Like the "Linux is Obsolete" flame war of 1992? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Actually, had that flame war never happened, nothing would have changed. As it stands, the only real effect of it was to put egg on Andy's face.

      I think the real reason it's famous is that it's a professor criticizing a student, and the student ultimately was proven right to an extent. A lot of geeks feel this way about their teachers (often rightly so).

  3. Say what now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In the news media, it is generally shown that flame wars and forks are detrimental to the growth of FOSS (Free/Open Source Software)

    No, it's claimed that flame wars and forks are detrimental. To show that something is detrimental would involve coming up with a bit of evidence.

  4. I think I speak for all of us when I say... by testing124 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Goodbye, XFree86.

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  5. Forks == the power of Open Source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The Single Biggest Advantage of Open Source software is that when the company/individual/team/whatever who is developing it no longer supports it well, it can be forked (FreeX86, and Blender are good examples).

    With proprietary software, even if your vendor is successful (Peoplesoft) you're likely to be trapped in a sucky end-of-life situation.

    If your vendor isn't successful, the software just vanishes.

    Forks protect against both of these.

  6. Motivation is key to successful forking by PornMaster · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When forks are brought about by personality conflicts and useless cruft, they're destined for failure... when they're brought about because something is impeding the progress of a motivated group of coders, they succeed.

    That said, I think this article certainly was rather meaningless, and not really "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."

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  7. OSS vs Human analogy by Deanalator · · Score: 3, Insightful

    fork = genetic diversity
    flame war = territorial battles

    The point is that both of these are needed in a progressive system. For a proper society to move forward, people's feelings need to get hurt here and there. People need to be able to go off and explore new ideas on their own, and I think thats the whole point of OSS, as opposed to a company which classically has very strict production goals.

  8. FOSS, Co-ops and Syndicalism by Shannon+Love · · Score: 3, Insightful

    One of the more interesting questions in economics is why decentralized forms of economic management like cooperatives or the old Syndicalist ideas never become widespread.

    It would seem at first that an employee owned and managed business would easily out compete more proprietary ones. For example, employee owned businesses don't have to fire people when times get thin. Everybody just takes a pay cut and keeps working. The co-op can maintain the same output as before at a lower price.

    Yet employee owned firms are very rare despite numerous attempts to create them over many years and in many different legal and economic environments. Studies have shown that such forms of organization fail due to phenomenon which we would call flamewars and forking. In short, politics either paralyzes the firm or causes factions to leave.

    FOSS succeeds to the degree it does largely due the non-zero sum nature of its products. Forking causes only a dilution of developer time not the division of physical assets. Even so, excessive forking kills products. FOSS can stave off, but not eliminate, the inherent threats poised by decentralized management.

    There is some tip point where creative give-and-take gives way to flamewars and where forking leads not to greater diversity and innovation but to a fatal dilution of effort and brand.

    Might be a PH.d thesis in that for somebody

  9. No kidding! by phorm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Even in debian/unstable, we're still stuck without x.org - doesn't make a lot of sense to me as many other packages are generally up-to-the-day updated (most that I use seem to be within the week).

    But still, we're stuck with Xfree4.3 ...
    I use to have an unofficial deb site which offered x.org, but that one died sometime ago as well... so I've been without x.org updates for awhile. I suppose one could use alien to debianize a bunch of RPM's but what a royal pain in the butt.


    Come on debian package admins, the people want X.org!