Re: A proposal for Midnight Commander

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

> > The beauty of open source is that you can do this, and am glad,
> > because not everyone has the same needs. Some people need smaller
> > applications, or we have differences. Good luck with the project
> > Ali. Now, lets go back to our regularly scheduled programming.
> 
> Indeed, open source is so what nice. You can take it, change it,
> re-release it. Do whatever you think is right.
> 
> No seriously. Ever asked yourself why there are forks ? Because people
> can't get along doing such changes in the core. Anyways I am far from
> forking anything. I first need to find a bunch of people who may be
> interested. Then it makes sense not earlier. I can also get along with
> Midnight Commander as is in CVS - also no problem, regardless of the
> fact that I dislike the fact of it using Glib. The good things about
> development mailinglists are you can raise some proposals and if people
> (dis)agree then you can search for those who may agree, who are
> interested in changes etc. On the otherhand we also had a good
> refreshing discussion - after all we are talking about software here and
> not personal feelings of people.

Well, I think that forks have gotten a bad reputation, but it does not
really deserve it.   Many times the needs of one community are
different than others.   

For example, you dont use even the same source code for the Linux
kernel on a PalmPilot as the one you use on a 64-way NUMA system.  It
is just not practical to satisfy every need, and to maintain every need
on the same code base.

It is still possible to merge improvements back and forth, but I think
that we should be talking about "customizations" of the software more
than forks.  Like it happens with cars.  Not everyone wants to ride the
same car: people might want to add a stereo, better wheels, different
engine, crazy paintings, dark glasses, etc.

Is this something the dealership should offer?  40 different variables
for every possible combination and have to support them all?  Probably
not.

So all the more power to forks.

Miguel