Lately I see a lot of repositories where the description reads “Unofficial fork of … Disclaimer: I am NOT the author…”

Do services such as GitHub also have a negative impact on the workings-together of software authors or is it just the new way of doing things?

The forkers try to cast off responsibility by adding such disclaimers, but:

  • Why don’t people even bother to contact the original author?
  • Or is it the author’s fault for not being reachable?
  • Or should we just fork and forget?

/grumpy old man