The ethics of digging#
SLOP8374 · Week 10
Two different questions#
May I fork this? The licence answers it. Almost always yes.
Should I fork this? The licence is silent.
This week is entirely about the second question.
The spectrum of abandonment#
- “Looking for maintainers”
- Silence
- “This project is archived and read-only”
- Deletion
Each is a different statement. Only the first is an invitation.
The archived repo as a statement#
Archiving takes a deliberate click and a confirmation.
It is the clearest signal a maintainer can leave without writing prose. Read it as intent, even though it removes no permission.
Fork as continuation#
A fork that preserves the mission, credits the original authors, serves the same community, and fixes what the original never will.
The project lives on under new stewardship.
LibreOffice from OpenOffice. MariaDB from MySQL.
Fork as appropriation#
A fork that strips the credits, relicenses where permitted, commercialises without acknowledgement, and presents the work as original.
The licence may allow every step of that. The ethics do not.
The line between the two is hardest to draw exactly where this course operates — when the original author is no longer present to object.
Case study: io.js#
In 2014 a group of Node.js contributors forked the project over governance — release cadence, decision-making, who held the keys.
Eight months later the fork merged back and the Node.js Foundation was formed.
Hostile fork or rescue? The code cannot tell you. The governance documents can.
The Ship of Theseus#
Replace every dependency. Update every API call. Rewrite the tests.
Is it still that project? Does it still get to carry that name?
Naming a fork is an ethical decision, not a marketing one.
Who speaks for a dead project?#
Nobody maintains it. Users still depend on it. A stranger has a patch.
Open source has excellent answers for who may act, and almost none for who ought to decide.
Required reading#
Muñoz Viñas, S. (2005) Contemporary Theory of Conservation. Elsevier. Chapters 4–6.
Coleman, E.G. (2013) Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Princeton University Press. Chapters 1 and 6.
Before next week#
Read your dig site’s licence, then form a position.
Should it be revived? Under what conditions? What would you owe the original authors?
Be ready to argue the other side.