Bruce Byfield's Blog covers some drama taking over the NTPSec fork of the NTP (Network Time Protocol) software, which is running on just about every unix-like operating system.
Apparently the original forking team invited Eric Raymond and Susan Sons into their project. That didn't work out too well as Raymond and Sons (no actual offspring involved), proceeded to take over the whole effort and use it for their own grandiosity. Then they ejected the project leader.
Byfield uses the story to spin his distaste for Forks for the Wrong Reasons.
However, a few weeks ago, while preparing an article about the animosity between the Network Time Protocol and its off-shoot NTPsec, I came to the conclusion that there are forks that deserve support, and others that do not. The more I investigated, the harder a neutral presentation of NTPsec became. Increasingly, it seemed a fork made for most of the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways.
We've seen some rather large projects spin out of forks over the years, some good, some bad, some dead, and others surviving long past any rational reason. The list is long. The quality is varied.
What are some of the WORST forks Soylentils have seen that somehow still persist?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2017, @04:24PM
So she thinks NTP coding standards are outdated. Maybe she can rewrite it in PHP if she can spare time from her grandstanding.
(Score: 3, Touché) by dyingtolive on Friday February 24 2017, @05:05PM
I briefly envisioned a future where, to install NTP, one needed node, mongodb, bower, polymer, and a bunch of other bolt-on cruft. It was disturbing, but at least it was webscale!
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2017, @05:21PM
oh no, a bunch of ruby horseshit with 8 pages of install instructions is the right way to go.