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would you like a spoon & knife with that 
If 'fork' has now become a computer term -
[and I just 'searched' it to see] -
then just what is it?
Curiously wondering what the next word will be that will be
transformed by the computer industry
"Fork" is a free software term for a project that branches off from an existing
project to develop the code in its own way. For example, LibreOffice is a fork
of OpenOffice.org.
The term's been in use for at least 20 years, so I didn't think twice about
using it.
As an example, go there:
https://github.com/watabou/pixel-dungeon
See in the upper-right corner the term "Fork" 
It's almost used in a literal way: at one point in the life of a project,
someone decided to go in another direction, like a fork on a road
<http://i.imgur.com/O6vSljU.jpg>.
Quoting Bruce Byfield <bbyfield@axion.net>:
"Fork" is a free software term for a project that branches off from an existing
project to develop the code in its own way. For example, LibreOffice is a fork
of OpenOffice.org.The term's been in use for at least 20 years, so I didn't think twice about
using it.
and the wikipedia entry is at least a starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice
Dave
Quoting anne-ology <laginnis@gmail.com>:
would you like a spoon & knife with that
If 'fork' has now become a computer term -
[and I just 'searched' it to see] -
then just what is it?
It's a common term for using the source of free software to make changes - either by oneself or as a group - and carrying on without necessarily being tied to or compatible with the previous developers or their product. So LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice.org and so is Apache OpenOffice.
Dave
Hi,
For example, LibreOffice is a fork
of OpenOffice.org.
Not exactly.
https://twitter.com/webmink/status/25769232489
For some people (including me) LibreOffice is the true
OpenOffice.org, but it´s not allowed to use its original name.
Stefan
Hi
A big
+1
to that!!
Regards from
Tom
I think having a different name is important, since we did a real lot of work to make OOo better for our initial release 4+ years ago.
We had no "baggage" of an older name pass down from company to company. We were able to make our own stand on what we could do as a "fork" or "child" of the code base that was OOo. We showed that TDF was prepared to make the best version it could with its initial version[s] of an office suite based on OOo. We did so well, that it looks to me that several of the other "forked" projects ended up "fading away" after people saw how well TDF/LO worked and how much was improved with the first few releases.
So I think not having the rights to OpenOffice.org may have been a blessing, not a bad thing.
Since I started with LO since its first "public" release version, I think we did all right.
I'm grateful for what LO has done. In four years, it has done more to improve
the code than OpenOffice.org managed in ten years.
However, joking aside, I'm not going to revise history. LO began as a fork and
a fork it remains.
Hi
It's not "rewritting history" to say that almost all of what was OpenOffice
is what is LibreOffice. Granted at least one pre-existing fork (Go-oo)
also merged and that tons of work has gone into it all since then. All
that OpenOffice managed to keep was the empty suite wrapper.
Regards from
Tom
All projects using OOo code are forks under the technical point of view,
as they have cloned the repository and applied significant changes to
the code.
This is independent from the name of the project.
So, as of today, there are three active forks of OOo: LibreOffice,
Apache OpenOffice and NeoOffice.
IMHO, AndrOpenOffice is a fork of Apache OpenOffice, but here I might be
wrong as I have not looked at the code.
Hi,
All projects using OOo code are forks under the technical point
of view, as they have cloned the repository and applied
significant changes to the code.
Sure, the technical point of view. But who cares about technics?
What about the folks that build the community? And the spirit that
carries the project? This does not feel like a split-off from 2010,
rather a continuing evolution.
Cheers,
Stefan
Of course, I know the story (I am one of the founders). So, I totally
share your emotional point of view.
OTOH, Bruce Byfield is a journalist, and we owe journalists factual
informations and not emotional ones.
This is on my own time, so nobody needs to worry about being quoted.
But, now that you mention it, if I were to claim in print that LibreOffice
wasn't a fork, I would receive dozens of people correcting me and calling me
ignorant.
Anyway, my memory of OpenOffice.org is that it was a rather unhappy project,
repressed by Sun. LibreOffice seems to have much better morale and productivity.
This is on my own time, so nobody needs to worry about being quoted.
Maybe I am biased because of my role within the project, but I think
that transparency is always the best strategy. So, keeping facts
separate from emotions.
Anyway, my memory of OpenOffice.org is that it was a rather unhappy project,
repressed by Sun. LibreOffice seems to have much better morale and productivity.
Companies do not like communities, although they pretend to be nice to
communities by appointing a community manager.
Companies are used to hire and fire, and are less used to motivate (and
volunteers are attracted by motivation).
I went from MS Office 2003 to OpenOffice.org when OOo was able to read/write the .doc files I was using. Actually, I was using it before they were saving files as .doc - OOo 1.x??. I was using both Windows and Ubuntu-based OSs at that time so I needed something that would work on both systems. Then just around Christmas I read about LibreOffice coming out with its first public release. I ended up installing the last RC version before the "official" release came out. I un-installed OOo on most of my systems in favor of LO since that point.
Yes, LO is "officially" a fork of OOo, but at that time OOo was a "virtual dead project" with the lack of "support" by Sun. Of course the fact that when LO's first release came out, articles started to show up about how much better Lo was over the "OOo project" and LO was soon the default of a large percent of the Linux distros that came out within months of LO's release - and "dumping" OOo as the default office package.
OOo was stagnant and the people who decided to create a fork of the OOo project and start it moving with the badly needed updates and improvements. So the LibreOffice project took off while OOo faded into the background. Of course then Sun finally decided that OOo was a "dead project" for their company and ended up "selling" it, including the rights to the name, to Apache.
The key to me is not whether or not it is a fork, child, or any other relation to the original OOo project, but the fact that the people behind LibreOffice in the early days decided that they did not want to see the idea of an FOSS office suite package to die do to the lack of "caring" by the one who owns the brand name of the current FOSS package. These people decided enough was enough and started to do the work on the code base and make the improvements needed, without waiting for another 3, 4, 6, or even 8 months till the next version release of the original project to come about. Thank goodness that these people did that.
Now we have a maturing project that has seen 4 years of work. LO has become what OOo should have become but did not and maybe would not without the push from our early developers. There are people who look at both the LO project and the AOo project, both starting from nearly the same point in the code cycle of OOo. I have not read anything where it makes me believe that the AOo project has the "passion" of its users and developers as the LO project has been for the past 3 or 4 years. None of my tech e-newsletters have had articles [so far as I have seen] that talks about the advances in the open source office suite project[s] being part of the AOo suite. Every one of these articles talk about LO advancing the free and open source office suite development and advancing its market share in the free and/or paid office suite market. Every time I read anything about an office suite that is free or one to use instead of MS Office, the name of LibreOffice comes up.
IMO - MS is doing a lot of things with their office suite package lines that lead me to believe that LibreOffice is starting to get some people at MS headquarters worrying about our free and open source office suite package and what will happen to MS's market share as more and more people are going toward free software over MS's paid software.
No matter what LibreOffice is, fork, child, or whatever, there is no doubt in my mind that more and more people are turning to LibreOffice for their office suite needs.
All very well, but the original context was defining the term "fork" to someone
who had never heard the term. By now, I'm sure, she's hopelessly confused, and
a little sorry she asked.
Hi
A fork is often a single piece of metal. The handle is usually a single,
slightly wider cylinder (ish). The 2, 3 or 4 prongs are typically a
corresponding fraction of the width of the handle section. With 2 or 4
prongs (tines?) it is usually difficult to identify any 1 of them as being
the original continuation of the handle and the other(s) as being
"off-shoots" or "child".
So i think "fork" is an excellent term. It only gets confusing when people
try to say that this or that prong is "the original".
When TDF split away from OpenOffice.org it took away sooo much that
OpenOffice.org was barely recognisable as the entity it once was. It was
only the name staying the same that kept it afloat, that and the amazing
hard-work of the few remaining people.
Regards from
Tom
