All open source licenses allow the copying of an existing body of code for use as the basis of a separate development project. This practice is commonly known as forking the code. This paper presents the results of a study in which 11 programmers were interviewed about their opinions on the right to fork and the impact of forking on open source software development. The results show that there is a general consensus among programmers ’ views regarding both the favourable and unfavourable aspects that stem from the right to fork. Interestingly, while all programmers noted potential downsides to the right to fork, it was seen by all as an integral component of open source software, and a right that must not be infringed regardless of circumstance or outcome. Categories and Subject Descriptors K.6.3 [Software management]: software development, software maintenance

Every software development project uses folders to organize software artifacts. We would like to understand how folders are used and what ramifications different uses may have. In this paper we study the frequency of folders used by 140k Github projects and use regression analysis to model how folder use is related to the extent of forking. We find that the standard folders, such as document, test, and example, are not only among the most frequently used folders, but their presence in a project increases the chances that a project code will be forked (i.e., used by others), and increases the number of such forks. This preliminary study of folder use suggests the opportunities to quantify (and improve) file or-ganization practices in large collections of repositories.