In software engineering, a project fork or branch happens when a developer (or a group of them) takes a copy of source code from one software package and starts to independently develop a new package. The term is also used more loosely to represent a similar branching of any work (for example, there are several forks of the English-language Wikipedia), particularly with free or open source software. Software engineering (SE) is the practice of creating and maintaining software applications by applying technologies and practices from engineering, computer science, project management, application domains and other fields. ... Source code (commonly just source or code) is any series of statements written in some human-readable computer programming language. ... A software package is a special method for the distribution and installation of software on computer systems. ... Wikipedia (IPA: [] or []) is an international Web-based free-content encyclopedia. ... This article is about Free Software as defined by the sociopolitical Free Software movement; for information on software distributed without charge, see freeware. ... Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ...

Forks with free software result from a schism over different goals or personality clashes. In a fork, both parties assume closely identical copyrights but typically only the larger group, or that containing the original architect, will retain the full original name and its associated user community. Thus there is a reputation penalty associated with forking. The word schism (IPA: or ), from the Greek σχισμα, schisma (from σχιζω, schizo, to split), means a division or a split, usually in an organization. ... Copyright symbol. ... Software architecture or software systems architecture can best be thought of as a representation of an engineered (or To Be Engineered) software system, and the process and discipline for effectively implementing the design(s) for such a system. ...

In proprietary software, the rights to the common code are shared; but this is rarer, as usually there are strict copyright terms associated with the source code, and usually these rights and interests are held by the employing entity, not the individual software developers. More commonly, a developer internally forks the code to develop two or more versions, such as a windowed version and a command line version, or across newer or common and widespread operating systems, such as a wordprocessor or other such software application for IBM PC compatible machines and one for Macintosh or Unix based computers. Generally, such internal forks will concentrate on having the same look, feel, and operation (behavior) between platforms so that a user familar with one can also be productive or share documents generated on the other. This is almost always an economic decision to generate a greater market share and thus pay back the associated extra development costs created by the fork. Proprietary software is software that has restrictions on using and copying it, usually enforced by a proprietor. ... An example of a graphical user interface in Windows XP, with the My Music window displayed A window is a visual area, usually rectangular in shape, containing some kind of user interface, displaying the output of and allowing input for one of a number of simultaneously running computer processes. ... Screenshot of a sample Bash session, taken on Gentoo Linux. ... A word processor (also more formally known as a document preparation system) is a computer application used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort of viewable or printed material. ... Application software is a subclass of computer software that employs the capabilities of a computer directly to a task that the user wishes to perform. ... IBM PC (IBM 5150) with keyboard and green screen monochrome monitor (IBM 5151), running MS-DOS 5. ... Macintosh can refer to: Apple Macintosh (computer) Charles Macintosh (Scottish inventor) Mackintosh (raincoat) The Scottish clan Mackintosh or MacIntosh McIntosh (apple cultivar) The town of McIntosh, Alabama The hi-fi manufacturer McIntosh Laboratory This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same... Wikibooks has more about this subject: Guide to Unix Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... Market share, in strategic management and marketing, is the percentage or proportion of the total available market or market segment that is being serviced by a company. ...

A fork that is standard practice in many projects are stable or release versions which are modified only for bug fixes, while a development tree develops new features. This is common practice in the Linux kernel, for instance, but has been misrepresented occasionally in the trade press as the more problematic sort of fork described above. [1] The Linux kernel is a free software Unix-like operating system kernel that was begun by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and subsequently improved with the assistance of developers around the world. ...

In some cases, a fork can merge back into the original project or replace it. EGCS (Experimental/Enhanced GNU Compiler System) was a fork from GCC which proved more vital than the original project and was eventually "blessed" as the official GCC project. In computing, EGCS (Experimental/Enhanced GNU Compiler System, pronounced eggs) was a compiler system which forked from GCC in 1997 and was re-merged in April 1999. ... The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of programming language compilers produced by the GNU Project. ...

Forks are considered an expression of the freedom made available by free software and a weakness since they duplicate development efforts or can confuse users over which forked package to use. Developers have the option to collaborate and pool resources with free software but it is not ensured by free software licenses but only by a commitment to cooperation. This article is about Free Software as defined by the sociopolitical Free Software movement; for information on software distributed without charge, see freeware. ...

The relationship between the different teams can be cordial or very bitter. For instance, the author of the LMule file-sharing program for Linux was uninterested in porting it to other systems, the xMule team started a fork to do so. Disagreements among the developers led to xMule itself being forked into aMule, and the tension between the developers persisted. LMule (meaning Linux Mule) was an early attempt to bring an eMule-like client to Linux, starting in January 2003. ... xMule — the X11 Mule — is a client for the eDonkey peer-to-peer file sharing network, intended to bring it to virtually all the major UNIX platforms, with a particular emphasis on Linux. ... In computing, aMule is a peer-to-peer file sharing application that works with the eDonkey2000 network and the Kad Network, but offers more features than the standard eDonkey client, including support for Kademlia. ...

On the matter of forking, the Jargon File says: The Jargon File is a glossary of hacker slang. ...

"Forking is considered a Bad Thing — not merely because it implies a lot of wasted effort in the future, but because forks tend to be accompanied by a great deal of strife and acrimony between the successor groups over issues of legitimacy, succession, and design direction. There is serious social pressure against forking. As a result, major forks (such as the Gnu-Emacs/XEmacs split, the fissionings of the 386BSD group into three daughter projects, and the short-lived GCC/EGCS split) are rare enough that they are remembered individually in hacker folklore."

Because of the ease of forking a project but the challenge of continuing to develop and support it, it's common for forks without extensive resources to become inactive — for instance, see GoneME, a fork of GNOME by a former developer, which was shortly discontinued despite attracting some publicity. Some well-known forks have enjoyed great success, however, such as the X.Org X11 server, a fork from XFree86. Most distributions have switched to X.Org, and overall X11 development has sped up as well. A Bad Thing, written with capital letters for added emphasis (and with the words similarly emphasised when spoken) is something which has negative consequences for the subject under discussion. ... GNU Emacs is one of the two most popular versions of Emacs (see also XEmacs). ... XEmacs running under Fedora Core 2 XEmacs is a text editor derived from GNU Emacs. ... 386BSD, also known as JOLIX, is a free operating system produced from the BSD derived UNIX operating systems for the Intel 80386. ... GoneME was a fork of the GNOME desktop. ... A gnome hiding behind a toadstool. ... The XOrg Foundation Open Source Public Implementation of X11 (the XOrg Server) is the official reference implementation of the X Window System. ... KDE 3. ... XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. ... In computing, the X Window System (commonly X11 or X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays. ...

Other examples

• Enciclopedia Libre,a fork of the Spanish-language Wikipedia, was created to evade possible advertising.
• Pretty Good Privacy was forked outside of the United States to free it from the restrictive laws on the exportation of cryptographic software.
• The many varieties of proprietary UNIX — all derived from AT&T UNIX and all called "UNIX", but increasingly mutually incompatible. See UNIX wars.
• The game NetHack has spawned a number of variants using the original code, notably Slash'EM, and was itself a fork of Rogue.
• OpenSSH was a fork from SSH, which happened because the license for SSH 2.x was non-free (even though the source was available), so an older version of SSH 1.x, the last to have been licensed as free software, was forked. Within months, virtually all Linux distributions, BSD versions and even some proprietary Unixes had replaced SSH with OpenSSH.
• Apple Computer's WebCore is a fork of KDE's KHTML 3.1. This technology is used in two web browsers: Safari and Konqueror. In this case, open source code became integral to a proprietary project.

The Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español is a Spanish language WikiWiki encyclopedia, released under the GFDL. It uses the MediaWiki software. ... Spanish Wikipedia is a Spanish language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. ... Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a computer program which provides cryptographic privacy and authentication. ... Proprietary indicates that a party exercises private ownership, control or use over an item of property, usually to the exclusion of other parties. ... Wikibooks has more about this subject: Guide to Unix Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... The Unix wars were the struggles between vendors of the Unix computer operating system in the late 1980s and early 1990s to set the standard for Unix henceforth. ... NetHack is a roguelike computer game originally released in 1987. ... SlashEM (short for Super Lotsa Added Stuff Hack - Extended Magic), is a variant of the roguelike game NetHack with many extra features, monsters, and items. ... Rogue is a dungeon-crawling computer game dating from 1980. ... OpenSSH (Open Secure Shell) is a set of computer programs providing encrypted communication sessions over a computer network using the SSH protocol. ... In computing, Secure shell, or SSH, is both a computer program and an associated network protocol designed for logging into and executing commands on a remote computer. ... Proprietary software is a pejorative term used by the Free Software Foundation to describe software in which the user does not control what it does or cannot study or edit the code, in contrast to free software. ... This article is about Free Software as defined by the sociopolitical Free Software movement; for information on software distributed without charge, see freeware. ... Apple Computer, Inc. ... WebCore is a framework developed by Apple, and licensed under the LGPL, to provide an HTML layout engine for Mac OS X. It is one of the two primary components of the WebKit framework (the other being JavaScriptCore). ... KDE (K Desktop Environment) is a free desktop environment and development platform built with Trolltechs Qt toolkit. ... Konqueror using KHTML to render the Wikipedia front page. ... It has been suggested that Comparison of web browsers be merged into this article or section. ... Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Computer, Inc. ... Konqueror is a file manager, web browser and file viewer, developed as part of the K Desktop Environment (KDE) by volunteers and runs on most Unix-like operating systems. ... Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ... Proprietary software is software that has restrictions on using and copying it, usually enforced by a proprietor. ...

References

• Fear of forking (Rick Moen)
• Forking (David A. Wheeler)
• Right to Fork at Meatball Wiki.