On Feb 5, 2008 9:37 AM, UNIX admin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'd be very surprised if someone rewrote history to > > declare Indiana > > the cause of the first OpenSolaris fork, given that > > we've already > > got Nexenta, Schillix, Belenix and Martux. > > Those aren't forks, since they sync up with the main OpenSolaris codebase on > a regular basis. > > A fork is a codebase that no longer syncs with its ancestor, but is instead > worked on independently, in parallel. A fork might import some desired > functionality down the road, or might not, or might even prohibit importing > anything from a particular codebase.
That doesn't sound like any accepted definition of fork I've seen, the definition here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_fork ...basically says that taking a copy of source code and doing independent development qualifies. Well, all three of those distributions took a copy of the source code (it says nothing about continuing to update that copy) and performed independent development. Meaning, all of them had changes that are or were not integrated back into ON, etc. As a result, they are *different* from the originals in certain areas, and therefore are not a straight copy and qualify as a fork in my mind. Are they harmful forks? I doubt it; but to me, they are forks. -- Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/ "To err is human -- and to blame it on a computer is even more so." - Robert Orben _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
