Software fork

This article is about "forking" of a software project into two or more different projects. For the operating system term for starting a new process, see fork (operating system)

A timeline of BSD Unix development. In this example a fork occurs when the NetBSD project was started, and again when the OpenBSD project was forked from NetBSD

A fork of a computer software project is generally a version of the original software that makes use of the same (or a compatible) license, but with a development team that is usually under "new management." Forks usually occur when fundamental design differences can't be agreed upon.

Notable Forks in the History of Software development

• Unix has been forked literally hundreds, if not thousands of times from the original software developed at Bell Labs

• "The BSDs" (FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD) are three popular forks of the original Berkeley Software Distribution, which is itself a descendant of Unix