alt Hacker NewsYou don't really though. Sure you can fork it and fix your issue, but then what? Are you going to maintain your fork in perpetuity? Are you going to patch all the software that depends on the code you fixed to use your version instead of upstream? Are you going to get your users to do that too?
In most cases this is extremely impractical.
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We are talking about a case when maintainer is unavailable to do the work: what would happen if this was a proprietary dependency and the maintainer is gone (eg. bankrupt, moved on, incapacitated...)?
There is nothing unusual about this, businesses face this all the time, the only difference is that you do have some agency with FOSS.
What's the alternative when it is not FOSS? Eg. build it yourself from scratch (and maintain it too), or move to a competing product.
Yes, you can maintain your fork for perpetuity if you can't/will not get your changes upstream. Why is that a problem?
If you're using any complicated FOSS professionally and you have SLA with your customers to say fix issues within day or two you don't have a choice anyway.
> but then what?
Then you send the patch upstream, they incorporate and maintain it for you. Congratulations, you just FOSSed.