What is public/private fork? - Criteria packaging in fedora

[Michael Schwendt]

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:07:29 +0530, Huzaifa wrote:

> I have forked libtar as libtar-ng, because the upstream does not have
> time to maintain it anymore.
> 
> Here is the bz:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=546169
> 
> Now the question is what is a private fork?
> Am i wrong in forking it and packaging in fedora?
> 
> Any replies/suggestions are appreciated, Thanks.

You could have avoided a lot of confusion by simply providing an accurate
spec file prior to requesting reviews.

Quoting from:

  http://huzaifas.fedorapeople.org/spec/libtar-ng.spec

| URL:            http://www.feep.net/libtar/

That is the _old_ libtar project web page which has nothing to do with the
tarball you provided. Only later in bugzilla you mentioned that your fork
also has its own project infrastructure at:

  https://fedorahosted.org/libtar-ng/

So, *that* is the URL you ought to have used.

Further, I think it would be good to explain what your plans are with
regard to the "-ng" in the project name. Starting libtar-ng at exactly
the same version as the old libtar also adds confusion.

Here the maintainer acknowledges inactivity, requests forks to use
a different project name, and comments on current code quality:
  https://lists.feep.net:8080/pipermail/libtar/2009-May/000259.html
More recent threads comment on licensing.