List of software forks
This is a list of notable software forks.
Undated[edit]
- The many varieties of proprietary Unix in the 1980s and 1990s — almost all derived from AT&T Unix under licence and all called "Unix", but increasingly mutually incompatible. See UNIX wars.
- Most Linux distributions are descended from other distributions, most being traceable back to Debian, Red Hat or Softlanding Linux System (see image right). Since most of the content of a distribution is free and open source software, ideas and software interchange freely as is useful to the individual distribution. Merges (e.g., United Linux or Mandriva) are rare.
- Pretty Good Privacy, forked outside of the United States to free it from restrictive US laws on the exportation of cryptographic software.
- The game NetHack has spawned a number of variants using the original code, notably Slash'EM (1997), and was itself a fork (1987) of Hack.
- Openswan and strongSwan, from the discontinued FreeS/WAN.
1981[edit]
- Symbolics Lisp Machine operating system, later called Symbolics Genera. Forked from the MIT Lisp Machine operating system, which was licensed by MIT to Symbolics in 1980.[1] This fork later motivated Richard Stallman to start the GNU Project.[2]
1985[edit]
- POSTGRES (later PostgreSQL), after Ingres branched off as a proprietary project.
1990[edit]
- Microsoft SQL Server, from Sybase SQL Server, via a technology-sharing agreement concerning the Tabular Data Stream protocol.
- SWLPC, from LPMud.
1991[edit]
1993[edit]
1995[edit]
- Apache HTTP Server, from the moribund NCSA HTTPd.
- OpenBSD, a fork of NetBSD 1.0 by Theo de Raadt due to internal developer personality clashes.
1997[edit]
- EGCS was a fork of GCC, later named as the official version.
1998[edit]
- Grace, from Xmgr, after that project ceased development.
1999[edit]
- FilmGIMP, later called CinePaint, from GIMP, to handle 48-bit colour.
- OSSH from SSH, when that project was proprietised.[3]
- OpenSSH, from OSSH.[3]
- Sodipodi, from Gill.
- Steel Bank Common Lisp, from CMU Common Lisp.
2000[edit]
- TrueCrypt, from E4M when the latter was discontinued.
- Tux Racer went proprietary in 2000, leading to several forks including OpenRacer, PlanetPenguin Racer and Extreme Tux Racer.
- OpenOffice.org, from StarOffice after Sun Microsystems made the source code publicly available. OpenOffice.org was eventually forked into LibreOffice.
2001[edit]
- ELinks, began as an experimental fork of Links.
- Fluxbox, from Blackbox.
- GNU Radio, from pSpectra.
- Xvid, was a fork of OpenDivX.
- WebKit, project was started within Apple by Lisa Melton on 25 June 2001 as a fork of KHTML.
2002[edit]
- GForge, from SourceForge.
- GraphicsMagick, from ImageMagick due to concerns over the openness of development.
- The Matroska container format, from the Multimedia Container Format, due to differences in direction.
- MirOS BSD, from OpenBSD.
- Syllable Desktop, from the stagnant AtheOS.
2003[edit]
- aMule, from xMule, which itself forked from lMule shortly before, over developer disagreements.
- b2evolution, from b2/CafeLog.
- DragonFly BSD, from FreeBSD 4.8 by long-time FreeBSD developer Matt Dillon, due to disagreement over FreeBSD 5's technical direction.
- Epiphany, from Galeon, after developer disagreements about Galeon's growing complexity.
- Inkscape (vector-graphics program), from Sodipodi.
- NeoOffice, a fork of OpenOffice.org, with an incompatible license (GPL rather than LGPL), due to disagreements about licensing and about the best method to port OpenOffice.org to Mac OS X.
- The Safari renderer that became WebKit, from KHTML.
- sK1, from Skencil when the latter moved from Tk to GTK+.
- WordPress, from b2/CafeLog.
- Zen Cart, from osCommerce.
2004[edit]
- Baz, the previous version of Bazaar, from GNU arch.
- FrostWire, from LimeWire after LimeWire's developers considered adding RIAA-sponsored blocking code.
- MediaPortal, from XBMC.
- WineX (later Cedega), was a proprietary fork of Wine.
- XOrg, from XFree86, in order to adopt a more open development model and due to concerns over the latter's change to a license many distributors found unacceptable.
2005[edit]
- Audacious, from Beep Media Player to continue work on the old version of that project.
- Joomla, from Mambo due to concerns over project structure.
- Claws Mail, from Sylpheed, due to perceived slowness in accepting enhancements.
2006[edit]
- Adempiere, a community maintained fork of Compiere 2.5.3b, due to disagreement with commercial and technical direction of Compiere Inc.
- Cdrkit, from Cdrtools due to perceived licensing issues.[4][5][6]
- LedgerSMB, from SQL-Ledger, due to disagreements over handling of security issues.
- MindTouch, a fork of MediaWiki.
- Mulgara, from Kowari after trademark threats from Northrop Grumman.
- MPC-HC,[7] a fork of Media Player Classic.
2007[edit]
- Go-oo, from OpenOffice.org, due to that project's contributor licensing agreement.
2008[edit]
- Boxee, a proprietary fork of XBMC.
- Dreamwidth, from LiveJournal by ex-LiveJournal developers.
- Drizzle, was intended as a slimmed-down and faster fork of MySQL.
- MiaCMS, from Mambo.
- Plex, a proprietary fork of XBMC.
2009[edit]
- dbndns, from djbdns after the latter was released into the public domain and abandoned.
- Freeplane, from FreeMind.
- FusionForge, from GForge when GForge shifted focus to its proprietary version.
- Icinga, from Nagios, due to perceived slow development and problems dealing with Nagios LLC.[8]
- kompoZer, from Nvu after that project went dormant.
- MariaDB, from MySQL, over concern as to Sun Microsystems' plans for the latter.
- Pale Moon, from Firefox.
- Qt Extended Improved, from Qtopia after the latter was discontinued by Qt Software.
- Voddler, is a proprietary fork of XBMC and FFmpeg.
2010[edit]
- Peppermint Linux OS, from Lubuntu, due to a perceived need for a cloud-centric derivative of the Ubuntu OS.
- Chamilo, from Dokeos, due to community management concerns with that project.
- LibreOffice, from OpenOffice.org (and merging Go-oo), due to Oracle Corporation's perceived neglect of the software.
- OpenIndiana, from OpenSolaris after Oracle Corporation discontinued the latter.
- Illumos, from the OpenSolaris kernel OS/Net, after Oracle closed down public access to the source code.
- webtrees, from PhpGedView, due to SourceForge's policy on exporting encryption.
- Xonotic, from Nexuiz, after that project was taken proprietary.
- Mageia, from Mandriva Linux, due to financial uncertainty and the layoff by Edge-IT, a Mandriva subsidiary employing many of the corporate staff working on the Mandriva distribution
- OpenAM, from OpenSSO after Oracle Corporation discontinued the latter.
- Calligra, from KOffice after developer disagreements.
2011[edit]
- Fire OS, a fork of Android for the Kindle Fire
- Jenkins, from Hudson (2011), due to Oracle Corporation's perceived neglect of the project's infrastructure and disagreements over use of the name on non-Oracle-maintained infrastructure.
- Univa Grid Engine, from Oracle Grid Engine, after Oracle Corporation stopped releasing project source.
- Mer, started as a fork of MeeGo.
- libav, a fork of ffmpeg.
- WooCommerce, a fork of Jigoshop.[9]
2012[edit]
- MPC-BE, a fork of Media Player Classic
2013[edit]
2014[edit]
- LibreSSL, from OpenSSL.
- Nokia X software platform, a fork of the Android Open Source Project developed by Nokia exclusively for its X family of Android smartphones.
- io.js from node.js. In 2015 it was blessed as the official version of node.js.
2015[edit]
- EdgeHTML, from Trident
- Open Live Writer, from Windows Live Writer 2012
2016[edit]
- Collabora Online, from LibreOffice, Collabora Online is a web-based enterprise ready edition of LibreOffice
- Goanna, from Gecko
- Nextcloud, from ownCloud
- Cyanogenmod from LineageOS
2017[edit]
- Basilisk, from Firefox.
- Bitcoin Cash, from Bitcoin Core, supported by the forked implementations Bitcoin ABC, Bitcoin Unlimited and Bitcoin XT.
- Unified XUL Platform, from XUL.[10][11]
2019[edit]
2021[edit]
- White Star, from Pale Moon.
- BuzzlyArt, from Artrise
2024[edit]
- Freenginx, from Nginx
References[edit]
- ^ MIT Lisp Machine License Signed Press Release October 1980
- ^ Richard Stallman, My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs
- ^ a b "OpenSSH Project History". OpenSSH. 2016-04-20. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
- ^ Corbet, Jonathan (2006-08-12). "cdrtools - a tale of two licenses". LWN.net. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
- ^ Jaspert, Joerg (2006-09-04). "cdrkit (fork of cdrtools) uploaded to Debian, please test". debian-devel-announce. Debian. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
- ^ "RM: cdrtools -- RoM: non-free, license problems". Debian. 2006-01-31. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
- ^ "Change log of release date from MPC-HC project".
- ^ "Frequently Asked Questions". Icinga. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
- ^ "Jigoshop Rise and Fall - How Did It Come to End of Jigoshop eCommerce Plugin?". 27 April 2020.
- ^ "README for the initial, deprecated UXP repository on GitHub". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-04-25.
- ^ "REMADE for the current UXP repository on GitHub". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-04-25.
- ^ Phillips, David; Sundstrom, Dain; Traverso, Martin (27 December 2020). "We're rebranding PrestoSQL as Trino". trino.io. Retrieved 4 October 2022.