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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>fork</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../F.html" title="F"/><link rel="previous" href="foreground.html" title="foreground"/><link rel="next" href="fork-bomb.html" title="fork bomb"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">fork</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="foreground.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">F</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="fork-bomb.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="fork"/><dt xmlns="" id="fork"><b>fork</b></dt></dt><dd><p> In the open-source community, a fork is what occurs when two (or
more) versions of a software package's source code are being developed in
parallel which once shared a common code base, and these multiple versions
of the source code have irreconcilable differences between them. This
should not be confused with a development branch, which may later be folded
back into the original source code base. Nor should it be confused with
what happens when a new distribution of Linux or some other distribution is
created, because that largely assembles pieces than can and will be used in
other distributions without conflict.</p><p>Forking is uncommon; in fact, it is so uncommon that individual
instances loom large in hacker folklore. Notable in this class were the
Emacs/XEmacs fork, the GCC/EGCS fork (later healed by a merger) and the
forks among the FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD operating systems.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="foreground.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../F.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="fork-bomb.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">foreground </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> fork bomb</td></tr></table></div></body></html>