That's right[1]; and the author of "Why I'm leaving Elm" understands this, yet claims that it's not possible somehow because the Elm people are hostile to it, and that's one of the reasons the project supposedly isn't really "open source".
Something seems a bit off in the reasoning. The only reason you can't fork something is that either you don't have all the code, or there is a license problem.
One way not to have all the code is that there is a dependency on specific SaaS server installation, whose source code isn't available. If that's the case with Elm, I missed the coverage of it in the article somehow. I did get the part that the packaging ecosystem depends on a particular server controlled by the Elm project.
1. Well, not a solution for the project, but for some of its unhappy users. The project, as such, perhaps doesn't even feel that it has these problems that require solving.
He doesn't claim it's not possible, he claims that the Elm community will excommunicate you for forking.
I can't think of a language or platform that doesn't have some degree of "soft" forking that maintains communion with the language community. It's common for proprietary reasons (linux kernel, anyone?) as well as experimental reasons (e.g. PyPy). So this is an eyebrow raising claim.
the last thing i want is to get into drama with developers of a project, so if my choices are to give up and leave or fork and face drama, then i'll give up and leave.
how that affects the Open Source status of a project is irrelevant, this is simply not a project that i could use, and thus for all intents and purposes, for me at least, it's a project that can't be forked.
You dont even have to push anything forward. Example Redhat's compilation of code or "forked" by CentOS, who were providing just a little more freedom. We all know how that ended.
Just keep in sync with the main project, and keep the annoying/proprietary stuff out.
> You don't get to stay in the club.
Or you become the club. I think LibreOffice has more club going than Oracle's OOo.
I’ve never used Elm, but that’s not how reasonable open source projects work. Red Hat maintains several rather divergent forks of Linux and they’re still in the club. I personally run a fork of Linux that I maintain, and I’m in the club. The only people who attract serious ire from the club are people who distribute out-of-tree modules that play poorly with the rest of the system. Even in that case, no one gets excommunicated, but the upstream kernel makes no particular effort to keep problematic modules working.
The open-source ethos means welcoming the friendly competition that comes from a fork. Look at the grandparent's link for the attitude taken by awk and bash.
kazinator|5 years ago
Something seems a bit off in the reasoning. The only reason you can't fork something is that either you don't have all the code, or there is a license problem.
One way not to have all the code is that there is a dependency on specific SaaS server installation, whose source code isn't available. If that's the case with Elm, I missed the coverage of it in the article somehow. I did get the part that the packaging ecosystem depends on a particular server controlled by the Elm project.
1. Well, not a solution for the project, but for some of its unhappy users. The project, as such, perhaps doesn't even feel that it has these problems that require solving.
billjings|5 years ago
I can't think of a language or platform that doesn't have some degree of "soft" forking that maintains communion with the language community. It's common for proprietary reasons (linux kernel, anyone?) as well as experimental reasons (e.g. PyPy). So this is an eyebrow raising claim.
em-bee|5 years ago
how that affects the Open Source status of a project is irrelevant, this is simply not a project that i could use, and thus for all intents and purposes, for me at least, it's a project that can't be forked.
neilwilson|5 years ago
It's a bit like Brexit. You don't get to stay in the club.
If there are sufficient people unhappy with Elm but are cohesive enough to push the compiler forward, then why not?
cies|5 years ago
Just keep in sync with the main project, and keep the annoying/proprietary stuff out.
> You don't get to stay in the club.
Or you become the club. I think LibreOffice has more club going than Oracle's OOo.
macintux|5 years ago
amluto|5 years ago
lmm|5 years ago