We should fork projects more often. I think we worry about fragmentation and about losing momentum, but we should be clear that there's two kinds of momentum:

1. Community popularity, contributor, and funding momentum.
2. Development/improvement momentum.

I think the first one doesn't really matter.

First of all, project popularity is just braindead internet points that you can't eat. It doesn't matter.

Splitting the contributor base doesn't matter either, because most projects of high quality have only a few major contributors anyway. So if you're forking with a couple friends, you're all set.

And funding? Very little open source software that you actually want to use is well-funded, so splitting zero in two is still zero. It has also been my experience that most people who make a living from open source software development are assholes, for some reason. In the best of times, this stuff was a hobby. Recently it became possible to make a living from it, and the result is that we have people adding age verification to Linux and others trying to "cancel" anyone who points out that this is bad.

So anyway, fork away.

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