The right to fork code makes open source a breeding ground for innovation | Hacker News Reader

The right to fork code makes open source a breeding ground for innovation

hanken.fi

25 pointsbuovjaga11 comments

> anyone could fork a program and release an identical, competing version of it. And still, all of the developers I interviewed considered the right to fork to be a cornerstone of open source software.

I have two problems with this article (and probably thesis).

First you can not just fork and release identical version of program. Most licenses require to use different project name, clear author identification and so on. If you fork and release Firefox with some spyware, you probably get sued by Mozilla.

And secondly forking is not 'right'. Rights have to be codified, are guaranteed by someone and can be taken away. Ability to create fork is just something which is not forbidden.

Then if I did release something identical to Firefox, I'd be releasing Firefox. I doubt it would be controversial at all, if anyone noticed.

Firefox's name and logo are trademarked, and the source license they use does not allow you to use that trademark. The result being that you can't distribute binaries of Firefox, whether modified or not, with the Firefox name and logo - not because of the copyright on the code, but because of the trademark on the name and logo.

Is it really a trademark violation if you haven't modified the binary at all? If I wrap a MacBook's casing around some different hardware and try to sell it as a MacBook, that's pretty shady, but if I have a stock MacBook, I wouldn't expect Apple to have a claim that I'm using their branding on a product that's not theirs.

And secondly forking is not 'right'. Rights have to be codified, are guaranteed by someone and can be taken away.

Does a software license not satisfy this definition?

It would, but < 20% of public projects on GitHub have a license apparently:

https://github.com/blog/1964-open-source-license-usage-on-gi...

Seems to me like people are equivocating the GitHub definition of forking with the conventional definition of a software fork - which directly follows from the right to redistribute modified copies of a program, though usually also implies some form of rebranding and schism.

GitHub doesn't provide an accurate view into FOSS at large, only certain subcultures.

I agree. The definition seems to have gotten a bit fuzzy and it can be hard to tell what people mean. Apologies if I got it wrong here. The other interesting aspect is with the conventional definition, forking is something you usually avoided and it was almost always divisive. The GitHub definition, on the other hand, seems to have shed its negative stigma.

Some kinds of innovation. I'm not seeing much GUI development, for example - the last interesting thing I can think of Compiz, and that was almost a decade ago. Admittedly there are some very nice-looking applications now, like Krita and Natron, but window managers and the desktop seem to have stalled. I'd love to be corrected on this!

When I think of GUI, I think of Qt which is opensource and commercial.

Forking isn't worth much when the code is too difficult to change. Innovation depends also on extensibility.

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