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Comment by darekkay | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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).

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-...

> It will only be deleted if the repo you fork from is a private repository

This makes sense. Thank you for clarifying that important detail. It seems to be missing from the parts of the discussion I've read here.

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?".

Consider:

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.

Yeah for cases like that, keep a local copy, thankfully many people did

What if the original is made private and then deleted? Does your fork remain?

Yes, the docs linked above say:

"If a public repository is made private and then deleted, its public forks will continue to exist in a separate network."

https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-...

IIRC GitHub will also delete the entire fork network for DMCA request even if your fork is not mentioned explicitly.

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.

Which is pretty much the opposite of what fork used to mean before GitHub...

you know you can fork dead and abandoned projects right?

Sure, you can. It might not be a good idea in the long term.

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