Unix Linux forking history (vague on details)

Question

I remember reading an article a while back that had a sentence that stuck in my head. First of all, I don't remember if it was about unix or linux, but it was about an operating system.

The phrase that got stuck in my head was that the license the guy who started the project chose was good because it kept the project intact because the temptation to fork would have been too high. I think they were talking about the kernel in specific, but again unfortunately I'm not sure, it could be just my mind trying to fill in the gaps. But I guess what I can deduce is that whatever license the original developer chose possibly prevented forking and commercial companies taking pieces of it into their own products.

I tried googling that phrase, but couldn't find anything meaningful (I guess I'm not a great googler). So I thought some of you great open source historians could help me out here. Does anyone have any idea what operating system and license the article was talking about. I'd like to read it again, wish I had bookmarked it.

P.S. I'm not sure if it's GPL, because GPL really doesn't prevent forking, does it. So not sure, doesn't make sense here.

Answer 1

I'm not sure what you're thinking of. Rick Moen's Fear of Forking essay covers a good deal of Unix history with respect to forking, so perhaps reading that might spark something. But his basic argument is that Linux won't fork, but having the right to fork works out to its benefit (because good forks can be rolled into the master).

Linux won't fork because the fork-er has to do too much work for no payoff: Any worthwhile improvements he makes will be absorbed into the main branch, and his fork will be discarded/ignored as pointless. The above happens with Linux, even though it hasn't with earlier projects, because of the effect of Linux's source-code licence.

Answer 2

If you read the GPL, there is nothing in there about forking, it's a copyright license. You are free to fork GPL's code as long as you adhere to the license. Leave existing copyright notices in place.

As forked code has to released under the same license, due to it being a derivative work, the changes are there for all to see. So in reality you are just improving the forked code (as ars said), unless you change it so radically, that it becomes a different beast.

Remember, that forking is good for open source software. It means that projects cannot stagnate if someone wants to take over a project.