In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software.
Free and open source software is that which, by definition, may be forked from the original development team without prior permission without violating any copyright law. However, licensed forks of proprietary software (e.g. Unix) also happen.
Etymology
The term fork comes from the POSIX standard for portable operating systems. Here, fork() is a system call which a process uses to creat...