What are the ethics & etiquette of forking someone else's github project to release it as a gem?

Question

I\'m doing some spare time coding around CultureGrid. They have a SOLR API to access 1.2m cultural artefacts. I\'ve released a gem to consume their service, but I\'ve got a nice

Answer 1

The only example of this I know of currently is the cache-money gem. It has been forked a few times, in this order:

• nkallen's fork
• kbrock's fork
• ngmoco's fork

In each case, the project had gone dormant for quite some time. Aside from the link on GitHub showing from where the fork came, there was no attribution to the original code in any of these cases (the middle fork even forgot to update the documentation to specify which fork to install when installing from gem).

As long as you make a good-faith effort to contact the original maintainer and the project has been idle for some time, go for it. Just make sure you update the documentation. ;)