I read “Fork us” as saying: you too can contribute, i.e. fork us and submit a PR. Plus, to say Fork us on Github also underlines the “we are 100% open source” point.
But, nevertheless, “Install Discourse yourself” makes more sense.
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“Fork or install Discourse yourself” is an easy way to say that it’s possible both to contribute and to do a DIY install. It requires little to no effort to change that line on the homepage but does convey that it permits both collaboration or self installation.
As for forking, @jomaxro : That’s the primary way that open source projects get developed on GitHub, and even if forking isn’t desired, it’s the primary way that Things Happen™ in open source too. As an OSS maintainer, I’m very happy to have forks because it doesn’t let the main project grow stale or die off. It means that there’s always a desire to improve and match the codebase overtime. “Fork” implies that you “have the power” to start the project anew if you decide the leadership has gone against what you believe is the best direction.
The home page had a slightly different layout originally, it said “Are you a developer?” as the heading there. I removed it to simplify the layout. So the idea wasn’t that you’d be an average user installing Discourse, you would be highly technical, a developer.
I’m not a huge fan of the “fork us” GitHub joke thing, so it could be changed:
Discourse is 100% free, open source software. Forever.
Fork us on github
to
Discourse is 100% free, open source software. Forever.
Install from GitHub
Audience is a bit different though, developers, it could cover both. The fork thing is a bit too clever-clever anyways.
Also note the buy page has the what if none of these plans fit my budget info right under it… plus info on the educational and non-profit discounts.
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So I’m all for supporting Jay and the amazing work he’s done, but shouldn’t there be an explicit mention there that you can install it for free (plus hosting costs) yourself?
All I would do is link the words “100% free and open source” to github/discourse/discourse as usual. If people can’t find the install linked directly from that page… geez… should someone drive to their house and install it for them, or something? 
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Linking “100% free and open source software” to github.com/discourse/discourse makes sense. What about also making the second sentence read:
You can install it yourself on your own server, or for a flat one-time fee of $99, a trusted member of the Discourse community can install Discourse in the cloud for you.
?
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@codinghorror I’m 100% with the change to “Install from GitHub” and linking to discourse/discourse. Requires minimal changes and accomplishes a lot (I think)?
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Me too! 
(And this month has had fewer installs than any since I started; glancing at the traffic stats, it appears to be a statistical anomaly).
Maybe just add a link to INSTALL-cloud like this:
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Point of order: i can’t code my way out of a wet paper bag and I’ve never been a developer at all in my entire life, but I am a pretty handy sysadmin—and that’s why I wanted to self-host. Not to hack on the code (I leave that to folks who can do it without curling into the fetal position, which is what I end up doing), but to have the pleasure of hosting a community my way and on a server I already pay for.
So, cloaking the download behind “Are you a developer?” is a little sideways, imo, just because developer != admin (and, much love to the devs I’ve worked with professionally, but most of them are sucktastically awful at anything resembling operations or security, at least as it applies to big-picture best practices in a multi-tenant, multi-application environment).
However, that being said, “Install from Github” is perfect. That avoids the “what if i’m not a developer but i want to self-host?” question.
tl;dr: the bikeshed should be purple
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Ok! The changes discussed above are in and deployed. Thanks for everyone’s feedback!
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