"Whereas, if the contributor opened a dialog with me, I could help guide them towards something acceptable upstream with much less effort."
Perhaps, but some people really aren't all that interested in such a dialog.
I confess to forking code in order to make changes that follow the principle of Make James Happy. I am often not interested in pushing anything back to the master branch, nor in coding things "just so" in order to fit into some project's coding standards. It's a matter of expediency.
(Yes, I do also submit patches to projects when I run into bugs I think I can fix. But here I'm referring to wanting a lib or app to take a different approach to things and to do things the right way, i.e. as James sees fit. :) )
In the past I would slurp down code as a tarball or maybe svn, and I'd go about my private alterations in secret. Now, I push my quirky changes back into the daylight. The upshot is that if anyone finds my changes useful they are free to take them and apply as they wish, with no cost to me.
It's a big improvement over the past, and observing that it still does not make things as easy as possible for the owners of the upstream projects is seeing the glass as half empty.
Perhaps, but some people really aren't all that interested in such a dialog.
I confess to forking code in order to make changes that follow the principle of Make James Happy. I am often not interested in pushing anything back to the master branch, nor in coding things "just so" in order to fit into some project's coding standards. It's a matter of expediency.
(Yes, I do also submit patches to projects when I run into bugs I think I can fix. But here I'm referring to wanting a lib or app to take a different approach to things and to do things the right way, i.e. as James sees fit. :) )
In the past I would slurp down code as a tarball or maybe svn, and I'd go about my private alterations in secret. Now, I push my quirky changes back into the daylight. The upshot is that if anyone finds my changes useful they are free to take them and apply as they wish, with no cost to me.
It's a big improvement over the past, and observing that it still does not make things as easy as possible for the owners of the upstream projects is seeing the glass as half empty.