[harikb]

While I understand the "fork everything you use" policy, github should make this process easier. Even though it is "free", it pollutes one's account/profile with hundreds of packages that are not really 'forks' with independent or alternate functionality.

Many automated vendor/package management tools will not automate pulling newer changes from upstream. If this was instead a simple a read-only version/tag, it is easy for those tools to provide upgrade/update path.

[goerz]

A reasonably good solution to mitigate the “profile pollution” is to create a Github organization for these kinds of forks (I use <username>-forks)

[btown]

As a side effect this adds more organization icons to your Github profile, making it appear as if you're such an important OSS contributor that you're an official member of the Username Forks Alliance :)