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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."

5 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Like the "Linux is Obsolete" flame war of 1992?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"?

    --
    Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
  2. 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.

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

    Goodbye, XFree86.

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    Karma: bad (mostly unaffected by funny mods)
  4. 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.

  5. 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!