[zen21]

Maybe nobody says that exact thing, but people do often say things like “if you don’t like it you can fork it”, as a way of shutting down discussions.

[worthless-trash]

I had never thought that the "you can always fork it" as a way of shutting down discussion.

I maintain forks that are frequently rebased on main/master with a few users. I have even suggested this as an action to people who wanted different features that I was not capable of maintaining.

[zen21]

For sure. And presumably those projects are ones in which maintaining a fork is practical. I have both forked and suggested forking.

However for many projects ‘just fork it’ is not a good faith suggestion, so it can’t be a blanket answer that applies to all FOSS.