Why. It is open source. A fork should be no big deal, and definitely not a “civil war”. I think the community should be quicker to fork open source projects that are not serving the needs of the community.
The corporations are trying to have the benefits of open source without the responsibility. Forking is a normal, acceptable part of open source and we should normalize it.
What would it mean to “normalise” forking? The costs of maintaining a fork are significant, and if one group of programmers are being funded to work on the project then it can be very difficult to fork a project in any meaningful way without significant resources behind it.
Also IIUC most of the parties in this conversation are corporations. They’re all trying to enjoy the benefits of open source development for a variety of reasons.
Currently forks are painful, because they aren't normalized i.e. our tools and workflows don't expect them. I'm saying rather than discouraging forks we should adapt our tools and workflows to expect them.
But the real work is all the hard work that goes into a fork. I've watched open forks die all the time--all it takes is no one to step up and do/pay for the work, which is basically the default, because it is in everyone's interest if someone else is the one to do that.
I think that's really the crux of the problem--there are plenty of folks willing to maintain software for money, and a whole lot of people who'd rather it not cost money and if it does, not their money.
If the tooling is better, who is going to maintain this?
Why. It is open source. A fork should be no big deal, and definitely not a “civil war”. I think the community should be quicker to fork open source projects that are not serving the needs of the community.
The corporations are trying to have the benefits of open source without the responsibility. Forking is a normal, acceptable part of open source and we should normalize it.