After some discussion on the IRC channel, we came up with the idea of supporting to copy a project instead of forking it (so it doesn't end up in the fork/ namespace). I imagined this as a "Copy" button next to the "Fork" button :)

This would have the following additional advantages:

• multi-level copies (instead of one-level fork relationship)
• ability to use template projects
• optionally, copy issues to new project

Assuming the identity of the "parent copy" is tracked in "child copies", it should also be easy to have a nice UI for PRs from/to copies - like the one that's already in place for creating PRs from forks or branches.

Some instances would probably prefer top-level "copies" over "forks" (like it works on GitHub / GitLab), so it would be nice if support for either things could be turned on / off per instance.

Some users might also prefer to turn off "copying" per project.