[georgemcbay]

Coordinating with random people over the internet is also very hard and time consuming and fraught with all sorts of problems like NIH, bike shedding, etc, particularly if you're the "newbie" trying to get changes into the existing project.

Sometimes it is easier to work within an existing project and sometimes it is easier to just fork to meet your own needs, unimpeded by the pace of the original project's maintainers... neither choice (to fork or not to fork) is correct for all situations.