“…So what lessons can the open source community learn from the
Samba-TNG episode? Allison sees it as a reminder that forking can
and should be a healthy part of the open source development
process. Contrary to the proprietary Unix programs of 1980s, both
offshoots of the Samba source code tree remain under the same GNU
General Public License. As a result, both programs remain open to
both other Samba developers and the test of the development
community.”
“If this had been a proprietary project — if this had been
Samba Corp., for example — Luke would have left, and that would
have been it,” Allison says. “He would have never been able to use
any of the code he’d been working on, and we would never have had
the ability to look at and take advantage of his continued
development work.“
“Instead, both projects are now in a position to communicate
without butting heads. Looking to the future, Allison says he’s
encouraged by the changes already brought on by the forking
process.”