[OSGeo-Discuss] Open Source development metrics

[Jeroen Ticheler]

Hmmm, I tend to strongly disagree here. Forking indeed can prevent a  
lock-in if that is becoming a serious issue in the project. Otherwise  
it just causes lots of duplication of efforts and dilution of energy  
into different forked versions.

It also does not help the average user much in selecting what's good  
for him/her. I think that Ubuntu as a popular release is one of the  
proofs that too much choice does not help to reach the large crowd. By  
limiting the installed default software packages they quickly reached  
a huge user group.

My 2 cents, ciao,
Jeroen

On May 28, 2008, at 12:01 PM, P Kishor wrote:

> Forking is not a bad thing. I have no idea why it is viewed as such.
> Forking is one of the beauties of open source, brings diversity in the
> code base, and even ensures longevity. The ability to fork is what
> ensures that in open source there will not be any lock-in.
>
> The beauty of this approach is the open source is not treated as
> something special. It becomes as normal as non-open source software.
> ..
> -- 
> Puneet Kishor http://punkish.eidesis.org/
> Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/
> Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) http://www.osgeo.org/
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