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Cyclone history so far:

Original project is authored by K. Czaja (copy of original project http://fjkraan.home.xs4all.nl/digaud/puredata/cyclone/cyclone_site/cyclone.html). Somehow author abandoned it in Pd extended and Hans was maintaining it until Extended was abandoned on its own. About a year ago, Fred Jan asked permission to this list to work on improving the help files of cyclone, and also help with some existing issues and making it widely buildly available (here's the thread: http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2014-12/108580.html). Since then, I helped a lot reporting bugs and a newer version was being maintained by Fred (0.1 alpha 57).

Recently I suggested a list of objects to be included in cyclone and ran across a pd-cyclone github from Fred (https://github.com/electrickery/pd-cyclone), I now realize it's a 'fork' - as its README.md says "pd-cyclone is a 'fork' of the https://git.puredata.info/cgit/svn2git/libraries/miXed.git/ migrated repository". I checked now that this original source is authored by IOhannes m zmölnig. Then I realized there are 2 cyclone versions in Deken, one uploaded by IOhannes, in respect to his authored github, and another one by Fred and according to his fork. 

Here's the oficial cyclone page in the pd site: <https://puredata.info/downloads/cyclone>. Original project description from K. Czaja is present until the "unreleased" version alpha 57! The deken package from IOhannes is named as "cyclone-v0-0extended", and I was able to determine it's 0.1 alpha 56. The other version in deken is from Fred's github fork, it has a distinct project description than the originals and it's a whole new versioning state named as "0.2beta1" not described in the puredata.info at all, but made available for download under Fred's member page (https://puredata.info/Members/fjkraan). 

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Questions:

Fred has a fork from another existing cyclone version (0.1 alpha 56), with a different and newly written project description, not described in <https://puredata.info/downloads/cyclone> and with a new versioning name (0.2beta1). Is this a "fork" of the project? in what sense? Will we have the same project with different descriptions? Which would be the "official/original" then? And how are the maintenance of both progress?

Cyclone is an old project that has been abandoned, but was kept alive as originally described through 3 different stages: a) original author (K. Caza) b) extended era (hans) c) post extended (IOhannes?). When Fred was asking how he could collaborate and work on the code, he contacted hans, who only had to say that in a message to this list was "If you want to stick to cyclone's central goal of Max/MSP compatibility, then keep working on it as cyclone. But please do not work on cyclone and break the Max/MSP compatibility."

Here's my common sense, tell me if I'm wrong, please. Cyclone has no "ownership", there's just a Pd community still holding on to it after being abandoned from the original author with different maintainers. Pd is an open source project and has a democratic community. Anyone can collaborate to the open source project of cyclone as long as it keeps its holy and central goal: Max/MSP compatibility. Project is open to different and numerous maintainers, coders, testers and everything.

If anyone is changing the original description of the project by either restricting it (such as saying "it should not include new objects", or "it should not keep up with new improvements from newer versions in Max"), expanding it (it should contain also clones from SuperCollider) or just changing it completely (it's now a military project against ISIS) is kinda taking control of the project and changing its scope as the owner. I don't think I or anyone could do that - unless it's a fork...

If the project has only one maintainer, who can only do so much and commit to a particular set of tasks, this does not mean other can't join and collaborate/help with the maintenance and progress. 

Am I way off?

Original description of cyclone is old, from Max 4.6 era, it was described as "at early stage" and aimed to being able to increase Max/Msp Compatibility and "even more ambitions". It never described the intention of being fixed to an outdated and arbitrary Max version. We could maybe update the project description or not (I don't really care). One way or another, description/scope changes should be openly discussed with the community. I just strongly believe that it can include new objects and functionalities without hurting the central Goal of compatibility and I have 10 new objects in the oven that I'd like to share. How can I collaborate then, and where do I send this code to? How can I help maintaining it?

Thanks

cheers