Talk:Software fork

Article Checklist for "Software fork"

Workgroup category or categories	Computers Workgroup [Editors asked to check categories]
Article status	Stub: no more than a few sentences
Underlinked article?	Yes
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	--Eric M Gearhart 07:07, 9 April 2007 (CDT)

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Issues

Erm... 'forking' is not limited to open-source software. Shanya Almafeta 09:02, 29 January 2007 (CST)

In the software world, fork() also is the name of a Unix/Linux command to create child processes.

I plan on addressing both of these issues as I work on this article --Eric M Gearhart 07:07, 9 April 2007 (CDT)

Multiple versions

I'm not certain I would call work on multiple versions of the same product (as in the example of Firefox) a fork. There is certainly an argument to be made that it is. For example, in MySQL, the urrent version is 5.*, but there are a number of people still using 4.* which, in many ways, is another product. Still, I think it's important not to go too far: to many people, a "fork" is a permanent split in the development streams of a product and, under that definition, work on different versions at the same time wouldn't qualify. Projects where different teams work on different major versions, and where there are no plans to reconcile the separate development streams seem to occupy a kind of gray area. Greg Woodhouse 09:46, 9 April 2007 (CDT)

That content was there when I first "adopted" the article. I'd wondered myself if it should be included or not, since a "fork" to me is as you describe: a split of the project into others descending from it. I'll try and work something out. You can go ahead and edit the article, too of course! --Eric M Gearhart 10:06, 9 April 2007 (CDT)