Also known as software fork, project fork, software development fork, software project fork
new program, and line of software development, derived from an existing one

Fork | Kaspersky IT Encyclopedia
A software product created on the basis of the code of another system and representing a development branch of the source project. Most forks are released under…
encyclopedia.kaspersky.com →The Glossary contains several hundred definitions of terms that you might come across in our articles and blogs, or on other information security sites. Unlike the in-depth articles in the Knowledge Base, every definition in the Glossary is succinct, while remaining highly informative. (This section is currently under construction) In the Knowledge Base, you will find various articles about common threats, a general classification of malware and unwanted messages, and a brief historical overview of the evolution of these and many other threats. The Knowledge Base now has three main sections: – The Detectable Objects section gives detailed information about malicious and potentially dangerous programs that we protect users against every single day all around the world, as well as advice on what to do in case of infection. – In the Spam and Phishing section, you will learn about phishing and spam mailings, how their creators earn money from them, and how this type of threat has evolved since the 1990s to the present day. – The articles in the Vulnerabilities and Hackers section is devoted to the topic of software vulnerabilities and how cybercriminals exploit them, as well as legislation and hackers in the broad sense of the word. A software product created on the basis of the code of another system and representing a development branch of the source project. Most forks are released under a free and open-source software license. Our innovative products help to give you the Power to Protect what matters most to you. Discover more about our award-winning security. Discover more about who we are… how we work… and why we’re so committed to making the online & mobile world safer for everyone. Try Before You Buy. In just a few clicks, you can get a FREE trial of one of our products – so you can put our technologies through their paces.
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A timeline chart showing the evolution of Linux distributions, with each split in the diagram being called "a fork" In software development, a fork is a codebase that is created by duplicating an existing codebase and, generally, is subsequently modified independently of the original. Software built from a fork initially has identical behavior as software built from the original code, but as the source code is increasingly modified, the resulting software tends to have increasingly different behavior compared to the original. A fork is a form of branching, but generally involves storing the forked files separately from the original – not in the repository. Reasons for forking a codebase include user preference, stagnated or discontinued development of the original software or a schism in the developer community. Forking proprietary software (such as Unix) is prohibited by copyright law without explicit permission, but free and open-source software, by definition, may be forked without permission.
Etymology
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Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).