this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
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[–] chebra@mstdn.io 1 points 3 days ago (12 children)

@sweng No need, I can instead continue reading the "license" and see the word "or".

> You may not create, maintain, or distribute

They disallow creating copies. Plus other things, but already creating the fork by either definition is disallowed. Not to mention, wikipedia is not a legal document while the TOS is, the double-quotes are used because that's the first time a new term is used, followed by its definition, and that the license is likely using Github's definition, not wikipedia's

[–] sweng@programming.dev 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (10 children)

Why on earth would the license use Github's very niche definition? "Forking" as a software concept has been around for decades longer than Github or it's "fork" button has existed.

Also, how about reading the full psragraph?

You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the software.

(emphasis mine). It only does what you think it does if forking = copying. Which it doesn't.

Question to you: Github provides a button labeled "Download ZIP" for downloading a .zip-file containing the source. If I press that button, am I in your opinion creating a fork?

[–] chebra@mstdn.io 1 points 3 days ago (3 children)

@sweng

> Why on earth would the license use Github’s very niche definition?

Maybe because it's ON GITHUB??

[–] sweng@programming.dev 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thst's not at all how it works. The definitions made in the TOS do not "leak" out of said TOS (unless the TOS specifies that, which it does not).

[–] chebra@mstdn.io 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

@sweng It's much more likely that the term follows the github's definition, because it's on github, rather than the wikipedia's definition, because why would it? You keep hanging on one word in a wikipedia article, let me fix that article and maybe we can stop this nonsense discussion.

[–] sweng@programming.dev 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Can you fix dictionary.com as well?

Computers. to copy the source code from (a piece of software) and develop a new version independently, resulting in two unique pieces of software

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fork

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