The Fork Paradox: Why Easy Customization Is Fracturing Open Source

As open source projects become easier to fork through permissive licensing and AI-assisted development, the ecosystem is fragmenting as developers opt for customization over upstream collaboration. This creates massive inefficiency, with identical features reimplemented across countless forks rather than integrated into shared projects. The pattern raises critical questions about sustainability: whether software engineering's shift toward individual autonomy over collective progress can be justified by the duplicated effort and environmental impact.