| I have posted a couple things related to this but never finished a complete summary of my thoughts. These two attempts come close: In [0], I shared some really basic thoughts about how this could be done by users of a particular VCS package, git. Two line summary: You run `git announce [name] [tracker]` to tell a git tracker
that you've got your own fork. If you host your repository
in a public place, the tracker just checks your repo for
updates so other users can stay informed.
At [1], I describe a similar system with a specific type of frequently-forked software (GPL'd tools). This seems less tied to using git. This software is available from diverse sources in multiple VCS systems and may be wildly divergent. Comparing the sources seems valuable, but difficult.Alternatively, Fossil does "distributed version control and issues", but it's really just meant to be one central location for a particular project. Thought I'd share. I'm on board with everything you're saying. There are clearly some issues as well, though. The biggest one I see is related to the "paradox of choice" -- when there are four forks all just one commit different from each other, how do you know which one(s) to use? This is why we usually just follow the leader (maintainer) and use the one true source. End users don't have the ability to quickly know which patches to accept and reject. Even a reputation system wouldn't necessarily provide clean signals, due to bandwagon type effects. Unfortunately, I already have enough trouble picking between `iron` and `nickel` as a Rust web framework. [0]: https://www.gaxun.net/ideas/git-announce/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13028079 |