A fork load of maintenance – forking a key dependency
Session Abstract
This talk explores the BBC’s experience maintaining a fork of dash.js for media playback. It covers the motivations, trade-offs, and strategies to reduce maintenance overhead – such as upstream contributions and community engagement.
Session Description
The benefits of building software on top of open source solutions are well understood, such as avoiding reinventing the wheel, leveraging global expertise, and enabling interoperability. Another benefit is the ability to customise open source software for your use case, but in practice this will often be done by making a fork of the project, which can result in a significant maintenance overhead.
This talk is a case study of the BBC’s fork of dash.js, a JavaScript library for media playback that is a key dependency for BBC web and connected TV apps. We will explore the reasons why a fork is being maintained, what the costs and benefits have been, and what is being done to reduce the maintenance overhead going forwards, including contributing to the mainline and engaging with the community. Attendees will come away with a better understanding of why and why not to fork, and how to reduce the burden of maintaining a fork.
