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Fork you! or how the social coding can help you - Alexis Métaireau </title>
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<a class="main" href="/">Alexis Métaireau</a>
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<h1 class="post-title">Fork you! or how the social coding can help you</h1>
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<time datetime="2010-11-05T00:00:00+01:00">05 novembre 2010</time>
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<article>
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<p>With <a href="http://github.com">github</a> and
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<a href="http://www.bitbucket.org">bitbucket</a> coming around, a lot of new usages
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appears for the developpers: it’s now easy to get feedback on your
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code/modifications, and to get help from others by, for instance,
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forking repositories.</p>
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<p>Eeach time I see people helping others, I’m amazed by how we like to
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share our knowledge.</p>
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<p>I say github, because it seems to be the more mainstream, but I think
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it’s something strongly related to the
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_revision_control"><span class="caps">DVCS</span></a>
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principles: the “only” thing github have made is to turn that into a
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social network, and to reveal the awesomeness of the DVCSes to the masses.</p>
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<p>What is really interesting is to see how this platform is addictive:
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it’s automatically updating a webpages with the more accurate
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informations about the projects you’re involved in, and add a bit of
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magic to that using webhooks, allowing you to update your website each
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time you push to you repository, for instance.</p>
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<p>Quite nothing, indeed, but, I don’t know why, I find this fascinating.</p>
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<p>I haven’t had the privilege to see my projects forked from github by
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strangers, but I’ve forked others repository to give an hand some times,
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when I wanted to, and the main reason is “because it’s <strong>fun</strong>” to do so.</p>
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<p>Yeah, you’re probably right, you have to be a nerd to find fun to fork
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others. The good point is that geeks are a kind of nerds, and some geeks
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are coders :)</p>
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<h2 id="new-ways-to-contribute">New ways to contribute</h2>
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<p>In addition, it seems that he community, or the communities, are there,
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on those new social networks for coders. It’s really handy to drop an
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eye on interesting projects, to report bugs, propose new features, and
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check what new projects this or this person have made.</p>
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<p>Well, “it’s not new”, you may think. That’s true, because it’s been a
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while that <span class="caps">SVN</span> was there and even <span class="caps">CVS</span> before that. But, it was a bit
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messy to “fork” a project, isn’t it ? And I’m not talking about all the
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hell <span class="caps">SVN</span> involved with it (who have not had issues with those messy .svn
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folders raises an hand !).</p>
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<p>It have not been so easy to share code and thoughts about code, to
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propose changes on existing code, than now. You think it’s better to
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implement this or that in a different way ? Clone it (fork it), make
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your changes and publish them, and then ask projects owners about it.
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For sure you’ll have answers.</p>
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<p>Even if they don’t want it, you can easily keep your changes, and keep
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getting their updates!</p>
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<p>Also, lot of <em>fashionables</em> projects tend to move on <span class="caps">DVCS</span>. Personally,
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if I know I can fork on a <span class="caps">DVCS</span> instead of from a “simple” <span class="caps">VCS</span>, I’ll
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probably be quicker to fork/clone, and to publish changes on my own
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copy, than if I had to do so on the upstream repository (and I’ll likely
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dont have the rights to push to it), because I will not be afraid to
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break things.</p>
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<p>DVCSes makes the contribution easier.</p>
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<h2 id="release-early-release-often">Release early, release often</h2>
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<p>Maybe have you read <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/">The cathedral and the
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bazaar</a>, by Eric
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Steven Raymond ? (If not, consider doing so, it’s a really interesting reading)</p>
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<p>Among a lot of others interesting things, one hint he gives is <em>release
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early, release often</em>.</p>
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<p>I understand it as: if you want to get contributors, release your code
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early, even if it’s not perfect, and don’t be afraid to publish your
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changes each time it’s needed.</p>
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<p>Without notifying it, that’s basically what I was doing for my own
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projects. I guess that’s because Social coding platforms encourages
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those practices, partially cause of the possible impact publishing each
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of your changes can have on your final solution.</p>
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<p>If you have considered publishing your projects, code snippets, or
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whatever (code related) but did not done it, considering them not yet
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ready, maybe should you think about it twice: you can get feedback and
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probably start some interesting discussions about it, if you write code
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that’s readable, of course!</p>
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<h2 id="a-step-further-for-open-source-softwares">A step further for open source softwares</h2>
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<p>Well, DVCSes are a honking great idea, and they’re starting to be really
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powerful when applied to free softwares. I mean: if you can’t see a
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project, it will be hard to contribute to it. And, I don’t think anyone
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wants to contribute to something closed/proprietary, <em>just for fun</em>. Or
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maybe am I missing something.</p>
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<p>Maybe it’s a kind of revolution, about free and open source softwares
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(<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open_source_software"><span class="caps">FOSS</span></a>),
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that is going on. I really like to know I have my word to say about the
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changes in the tools I use, and to know that I can make them evolve.</p>
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<p>Let’s take an example. Imagine I’m using a web framework on daily basis,
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as a part of my job as a web developer. I do like using an open source
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software because I know how it’s working, and because I know that I can
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interact with the authors of the framework while they’re doing the
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changes on it.</p>
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<p>That’s communication, nothing more, and of course I can do that with an
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internal proprietary solution, but it will cost me <strong>a lot</strong> more time,
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for a dead-simple reason: a company is not as big and powerful as a
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community can be: it will cost time to work on this framework, resources
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to maintain it, fix bugs etc.</p>
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<p>Well, I’m starting advocating here about Free and Open Source Softwares
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use on companies, what is a bit beyond the scope of this article, so
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let’s back to our DVCSes and new social related tools.</p>
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<p>If I find a bug in this framework, while working, I have the possibility
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to go and talk with the creators of the framework, to open a ticket, and
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even to make a fix for it, because I’ve access to the source code. If I
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want to create a new feature, I just have to fork it, hack it, and then
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publish my code to have feedback of the community.</p>
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<p>My fix/work will benefit to all the people (and maybe others companies)
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working with this framework, and it’s a way to prove the community that
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my company is enough skilled to make code-fixes to the framework, so
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that’s all good !</p>
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<h2 id="whats-next">What’s next ?</h2>
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<p>I hope those social coding platforms are only the begining of a new
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area. I hope they will make people realize what the power of the
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community is, and how easily they can becomes part of it.</p>
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<p>If you’re not using them right now, maybe you should do so: have a look
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on how the programs you’re using are made, consider publishing your
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experimentations, and share them with others, you will see, it’s kind of
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addictive !</p>
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