That's why I usually don't use the official "fork" feature, but clone and push the repository manually instead. I would like to keep the fork network connection on Github, but I don't want to see my fork deleted because of an error, malice or simply lack of knowledge.
It will only be deleted if the repo you fork from is a private repository. The documentation [1] covers the other scenarios, in all of which you keep your copy of the code (including when the public repository is made private later).
No, it doesn't. It only makes sense until you stop and go "Wait, no, hold on a minute. Why would they delete the fork instead of simply severing the fork relation in their fork relations table?".
You have access to many private company files. After you leave the company, the company is obligated to send you copies of all of the files because you may have linked to them. After all, you could have made personal copies of all of the files, so you should still retain access through links.
TIL, thanks! I probably confused this with the GitHub takedowns, when forks are removed as well (as it happened to the youtube-dl repo). I could imagine my manual clone not withstanding such takedown either, though.
Same. Another reason is I don't like how Github inserts "Forked from ..." in the project name. If your "fork" becomes extremely divergent after a couple years (maybe you had a different vision for the project), you are still stuck with the "Fork from..." sub-header, which basically tells users that they should look at the original. I'm otherwise fine putting attribution in a README.
Right, the entire point of GitHub forks is to make it easier to upstream your local changes to the original repository. If you have no interest in doing that you shouldn't use a fork.
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
This is unexpected behaviour from Github here which may (and has, by the anecdote of OP) cause permanent data loss. Documentation is not good enough, as users should not have been expected to have read the entire documentation.
I guess this is a question of who should have been given further information. For example, whoever at the organization deleted the repo would have been given a very clear warning screen including the number of forks that would be deleted by their action prior to them doing it.
On that note, an organization admin can _directly_ delete your private fork without even deleting the source repository if they want. GitHub's permission model is fairly direct that private forks you make through your membership in an organization are more the organization's property than the forker's.
> I guess this is a question of who should have been given further information. For example, whoever at the organization deleted the repo would have been given a very clear warning screen including the number of forks that would be deleted by their action prior to them doing it.
This is exactly how it works today already. If I try to delete a private repository people have forked, I see the following:
> We will also delete all 4 forks since this is a private repository.
Clicking on the delete button, again:
> Unexpected bad things will happen if you don’t read this!
> This will also delete all 4 forks since this is a private repository.
IMO it would be useful if non-obvious behavior like that were warned about when you fork the repo. I know I'd get burned by that. I keep a local mirror of everything though.
In my opinion in this case the fork shouldn't be allowed to be created at all. If this is the final effect it's better to inform the user that "no, we don't let you fork the repo". So he could have done it the normal way, clone the repo and push it with another remote, that would have not had this issue.
To this day I thought that the "fork" concept was only a relationship at the level of UI, but as I see it has a logic in it, that is the fork depends on the original repository even for permissions, and that to me is surprising!
I think you're misunderstanding the way that a lot of orgs use forks. Many orgs will have the team fork the repo under their own account so they get their own working space, and then they make PRs from their forks back to the origin. Before branch protections it was also the best way to manage write permission. This is a really common pattern and not allowing it would break how a lot of people use github.
If the org doesn't work this way, it can disable forking so that it's not allowed at all on the repo (or org-wide), like you said.
I don't think it's an unexpected at all given that the original repo was private, not just the fork. Secondly a GitHub "user" isn't really a user in the consumer sense. They're a developer, as a developer/professional you can be expected to consult the documentation of a tool you use so you understand default behavior.
