[wpietri]

Ooh, this is gold: "The slogan pretends to be anti-authority, but in practice it is used to protect informal power."

Spot on. I almost never see "just fork it" brought up in a context that acknowledges what that would actually take. It mostly shows up as a way of shutting down discussion, and often has a flavor of victim-blaming to me.

[d1sxeyes]

I agree it’s often used to shut down discussion, but most often I’ve seen it when a contributor is losing an argument (their PR isn’t getting merged, or their feature request is rejected, or their bug is marked wont-fix) and they don’t agree.

“Victim blaming” is an odd phrase here. Could you clarify what you mean?

[wpietri]

Sure.

As background, when power is misused, you'll often find somebody immediately showing up to explain why it was the fault of the person harmed. In the US, for example, this happens basically any time a cop kills somebody. In analyzing the situation, the agency of the person with power is minimized or ignored; the agency of the person harmed is maximized.

Open-source project are often run as little fiefdoms. Power is concentrated; checks and balances are minimal or nonexistent. Note that I'm not saying that this is bad or good; that's just how it is.

The "just fork it" style of response that the article is addressing, which I don't ever think I've seen in an issue but often see here on HN as a response to some complaint about a project. It's not part of a careful analysis about the costs and benefits of forking. There's also little or no attempt to understand who a project's audience and community is, or the value of the complaint in that context. It's a drive-by response to shut-down a complaint in a way that treats the complain as illegitimate, suggesting that person is wrong for wanting something different from what's on offer.

Does that help?

[d1sxeyes]

I still don’t understand how someone who wants something different from what’s on offer is “a victim”.

I do agree that “just fork it” is a flippant and pretty unhelpful thing to say, but just because a piece of software is open source, that doesn’t necessarily automatically mean that its development should follow the designs of a committee of its users.

You are absolutely correct that often, open source projects are indeed run with the maintainers exercising absolute control. I think this is where the tension comes in, because sometimes, folks expect that to be different, and approach the project with a sense of entitlement that somehow the project should change to fit their needs.

“Just fork it” is a way of saying “if you need it to fit your needs, feel free to take what we’ve done so far and add what you need, but we aren’t going to”.

The author’s core argument seems to be summarised here: “In social terms, it’s the equivalent of saying: “If you don’t like society, go start your own civilisation.”

It’s not at all equivalent though. It’s more like “I invited everyone round for dinner, and I don’t want my house to smell of fish, so I’m not cooking fish. If you want to cook fish, you can borrow my pans, but invite everyone round to your house instead.”

[grayhatter]

> Power is concentrated; checks and balances are minimal or nonexistent.

Is power concentrated? What power do maintainer of FOSS projects have over people who would like to use that project? How can they compel people to do what they want as it relates to the project?

> It's a drive-by response to shut-down a complaint in a way that treats the complain as illegitimate, suggesting that person is wrong for wanting something different from what's on offer.

It can't possibly be suggesting that the person is wrong for wanting something different. The "drive by", "fork it" comment is saying. If you want something different, then make the different thing exist, no one will be able to stop you from making the thing that you want.

Unless you feel that the different thing is the person who is complaining, is entitled to having other people do what the complainer wants, instead of what the maintainer wants?

On the internet; if you wanted to suggest that someone's complaints or suggestions are illegitimate, you wouldn't say "fork it" you would say, "no, that's stupid, you're stupid, how could you suggest such a dumb, stupid, crazy, insane thing?!" surely followed by a series of extra expletives, or angry rage posts.

Or the just fork it comment is from a maintainer. Who has decided that they do not want the suggested changes. In which case, it's still not saying the changes are illegitimate, it's saying that the maintainer objects to them; so they're offering the only remaining solution for the complainer to get the changes they want.