Published at LXer:

One of the most controversial freedoms of free software is the right to simply take the code and go make your own competing project — what is popularly called a “fork”. It’s controversial because it seems like a betrayal of the original developer; because it distributes resources into competing groups, which may waste effort; and because it may create confusion in the marketplace of ideas that is free software distribution. But it is a critical freedom to have, and the recent fork of LibreOffice from OpenOffice.org, like the fork of X.org from Xfree86 years ago, shows why it’s so important. Read the full article at Free Software Magazine.

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