Week 10 Dig: Restoration ethics

Whose code is it — the ethics of forking abandoned work, the difference between licence and intent, and when revival is continuation vs appropriation.

26 April 2027

Before the dig#

Read your dig site’s licence. Then answer three questions:

1. Does the licence permit forking? Almost all open-source licences do. This question is easy.
2. Did the author intend for someone to fork it? Was the repo archived with a note? Was there a “looking for maintainers” issue? Or did the author simply stop?
3. Should you fork it? This is the hard question, and the licence does not answer it.

Read at least one perspective on the ethics of forking:

• The maintainer’s prerogative position: archiving a repo is a statement
• The community continuation position: open source belongs to everyone
• The Ship of Theseus position: how much can you change before it is new?

In the session#

Structured debate. Half the class argues for reviving a specific dig site; the other half argues against. Switch sides halfway through.

Afterwards#

Write a 200-word position statement: should your dig site be revived? Under what conditions? What would you owe the original authors?