Yes, if the license on the thing is open source, it is open source.
People don't owe you being in their community or whatever.
Fork it, get your shit working, don't tell anyone.
When you fork, change the name. Even GNU projects prohibit forking under the same name; you can't fork GNU Emacs and call your forked project GNU Emacs.
Evan this, Evan that.
Yes, if the license on the thing is open source, it is open source.
People don't owe you being in their community or whatever.
Fork it, get your shit working, don't tell anyone.
When you fork, change the name. Even GNU projects prohibit forking under the same name; you can't fork GNU Emacs and call your forked project GNU Emacs.