Time to wait before forking open source software?

Question

I'm working on an application and I needed an API wrapper for it. I noticed that most of the API calls I needed weren't implemented, so I went ahead with adding them in. There are a few bugs that need fixing which I'm planning to fix as well.

My problem is that development of the wrapper is almost non-existant at the moment. A bug submitted with a patch from October 2009 has been ignored so far.

I've emailed the main developer so I can commit my changes or even submit them somewhere, since on the homepage, it said that he's the person to contact with this sort of stuff. I've also asked about this on the discussion board, with no response.

My question is, how long should I wait for a response before forking this wrapper? It's one of only two open source wrappers for this API and listed on the API Doc's page. I hate to see that there's no improvements to it.

So, how long should I wait. What's normal for this kind of thing?

In case it matters: the licence is Simplified BSD

UPDATE:
The original developer finally responded; so I didn't end up forking. Apparently he was just very busy with work.

A good (relevant) article to read for anyone coming across this question: http://dashes.com/anil/2010/09/forking-is-a-feature.html

And thanks to everyone for your answers!

Answer 1

It depends if you plan to maintain your fork. If you do then the chances are it will become a better project than the original. Otherwise maybe wait a couple of weeks. Still, even if you released today there's nothing to stop the original project merging your changes so the community as a whole benefits either way.

Answer 2

You can fork any time you want. Once I was in similar situation. As I had informed project admin that I'm going to fork, I obtained a response and it wasn't necessary :P

BTW I have written to sourceforge crew (project was hosted on sf) and that was their advice to fork.

Answer 3

There's no protocol, just call your fork something else and give the original prosjekt plenty of kudos for the original work.

Forks happen all the time, it's not necessarily a 'divorce' with the origial maintainers ... just happy coding.

Your additional calls might be usefull for someone else, but then again it might not.

Answer 4

Does the project has a publicly known mailing list/bug tracker, and if is - is it affordable to submit a patch there? Also, can't be a developer - become a maintainer at one of popular Linux distros, (submit a Gentoo bug/Launchpad entry). If there's no sense in such actions - just fork.

Answer 5

Sounds like you've done the right thing though and tried to stay within the existing branch and now it is appropriate to fork.

If nothing else, forking is a more powerful action than most other things i.e. if you fork and still don't get the original developer's attention then you can be satisfied that you did the right thing. Of course once forked, there's no real reason why there can't be some convergence at a later stage.