Reasons for Forking a Linux Distribution by Zachary Welch is a long but worthwhile read on the squabbles of open source developers. Here’s a one paragraph mission statement from the Zynot homepage:
The Zynot Foundation is a 501.c.3 non-profit organization that has been established to hold the source code, trademarks, and any other intellectual property developed by and for its community. Most notably, this entity will be responsible for the management of a fork of the Gentoo Distribution, ensuring that the involved intellectual property cannot be subverted by any single for-profit interest. The fork will be targeted at embedded users, enterprise users and developers. Initially, current Gentoo technology will be utilized, but future technologies will be developed and directed by the community.
I’ve been a casual Gentoo user. I’ve installed it a few times, played around with it, managed to totally hose the OS one or twice. When Moof pointed out the fork this morning, it struck me by suprise. First, I had no idea that there was an embedded Gentoo project. That totally rocks. Second, all of these biz arguments and behind the scenes stuff isn’t reflected on the Gentoo front page.
How widespread is stuff like this in the Open Source world? Probably more than you think.