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Software Engineering

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    When you aren't using Github, you're going the old-school route and creating a local cloned copy of the project so you can modify it. Forking on github gives you access to pull requests which are preferred by many projects. If you're on another project, you'll end up creating patches and sending those in to be reviewed. Commented Jun 6, 2013 at 16:45
  • It's a simple one-step process to setup a remote tracking branch. Anybody who has tried to contribute to a git repository outside of GitHub knows how tedious it can be. Plus, if the original author goes AFK, you can follow the development graph to find forks that are still actively developed. Hopefully, it'll keep GitHub from degenerating into a wasteland of dead projects the same way SourceForge did. Commented Feb 19, 2014 at 0:03
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    What if you fork a project but make no changes. Would this consider illegal? Commented Aug 3, 2017 at 19:44
  • @Jesse All Public Repositories on GitHub should have an Open Source License (thats their Terms of Service) and therefore its no problem at all. Especially when you make no changes. Commented Oct 6, 2017 at 9:03