Detach fork but keep fork symbol and link

[PoLaKoSz]

Intro

I forked a project just to get the fork symbol (and link to the upstream) to show the visitors of my project that this is not fully my own work (and I wrote it in the README too) but now my commits not counts because it's a fork not a standalone project.

Isaac Halvorson in 2016 asked why not counts and in the official response contained two important parts:

• you’d end up with two contributions for each commit
• If a fork becomes a different project from it’s upstream repository, and will never have commits merged into the upstream repository, then you can ask GitHub Support to detach the fork and turn it into a standalone repository. This will make the commits count towards your contributions.

Proposal

In the Settings/Danger Zone could be a Detach fork option which would make it a standalone project BUT under the project name whould stay the fork icon and the URL to the old upstream project:

Advantages

• GitHub Support would get less request to detach a fork
• I'm not sure how GitHub manage this huge code duplication but maybe it would make it more easy with my proposal (because it would work in the background as a fork until the last same commit - not a fully copied new project)
• We will get contribution points 😄 and we don't need to create a new project with the same files anymore
• Project visitors of a detached project would clearly see who was the original author (or maybe it's an another fork but (s)he will be able to trace down the original project through the links after the detached from text)
• Related future requests:
  • Feature: Claim Abandoned Projects #1385 Claim Abandoned Projects : no longer would be necessary
  • Dead repositories revived by the community #756 Dead repositories revived by the community : GitHub only accept votes from detached forks

(Sorry for my English)

[TPS]

Apparently, this is the direct opposite of my #687! 🙃

[oprogramador]

@PoLaKoSz

IMO GitHub should count contributions on forks but it should also check for duplicated commits and count that as only one contribution.

[PoLaKoSz]

Thank You @TPS and @oprogramador for taking Your time to read my proposal!

@TPS
I agree with You that this is kind of an opposite aproach compared to Your proposal BUT
I don't think this is a direct opposite. Maybe I overcomplicated somewhere so let
me try to clear some things up:

I suggest to GitHub to give an option for the fork owner to detach a fork but that detached fork would be a special fork ...

• this fork should be available in the upstream repo's network graph (so these detached fork would not "lost" in GitHub like now when I think lot of people just create a copy of the upstream instead of forking it)
• detached fork would contain an URL to the upstream repository (it would make the original author obvious - crediting) - and this first two is why i think this is not a direct opposite of Your proposal
• when a fork owner decide to make a detached fork from his/her normal fork the commit history should be identical compared to the upstream
  • it would save the owner to clone the project to his/her computer and upload it again to GitHub just to get contribution points
  • it would reduce -in my opinion- storage space for GitHub
• fork owner would't be able to send PR to the upstream (that's what's forks for but not detached forks) ...
• until (s)he make his/her detached fork back to a normal fork
  • it would enable the send PR function again
  • it would remove previous contribution from the project owner because GitHub would assume that the owner wants to contribute again to the upstream and don't want to work on his/her own detached fork anymore

@oprogramador
I'm sorry but i don't aggree with You. Fork made to make it easy to contribute to the upstream repository so I aggre with GitHub about not counting your own contribution in your own fork. The detached fork would be a solution for those who doesn't want to commit to the upstream repository but wants to make a really different product/project while still crediting the original author(s) in a really nice way (under the detached fork's owner name) and still getting contribution points. Deciding what commit should count in my opinion would require more resources and this is why i think GitHub disabled counting in forks.

My main point is to prevent further code duplication without referencing the original source.

[ryenus]

When someone wants to send a pull request to the fork, namely the downstream repo.
Currently the submitter has to be CAREFUL to choose which repo should the PR be sent to,
whether the downstream repo, or the upstream repo.

In our experience, that's where the confusion comes from, especially when one wants to choose
the downstream repo as the PR target, however the default target is the upstream repo.

I think at the downstream repo, the owner should be able to set some preference
so that the upstream repo can be excluded as a PR target.

Other than that I think the link to the upstream repo isn't a problem.
It's actually useful to have the link so that the fork network data still work.