List of software forks

This is a list of notable software forks.

Contents 1 Undated 2 1991 3 1993 4 1995 5 1997 6 1998 7 1999 8 2000 9 2001 10 2002 11 2003 12 2004 13 2005 14 2006 15 2007 16 2008 17 2009 18 2010 19 2011

Undated

• 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 Slackware. 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 was 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.
• Fluxbox, from Blackbox.
• Openswan and strongSwan, from the discontinued FreeS/WAN.
• c. 1990: SWLPC, from LPMud

1991

• Xemacs, from GNU Emacs, originally for Lucid Corporation internal needs.

1993

• FreeBSD started as a patchkit to 386BSD.
• NetBSD started as a patchkit to 386BSD.

1995

• Apache HTTP Server, from the moribund NCSA HTTPd.
• OpenBSD was a fork of NetBSD 1.0 by Theo de Raadt due to internal developer personality clashes.

1997

• EGCS was a fork of GCC, later blessed as the official version.

1998

• Grace, from Xmgr, after that project ceased development.

1999

• FilmGIMP, later called CinePaint, from GIMP, to handle 48-bit colour.
• OpenSSH, from SSH, when that project was proprietised.

2000

• TrueCrypt, from E4M when the latter was discontinued.

2001

• ELinks began as an experimental fork of Links.
• GNU Radio, from pSpectra.
• PukiWiki, from YukiWiki.
• Xvid was a fork of OpenDivX.

2002

• Beep Media Player, from XMMS, to port the program to GTK+ 2.
• 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

• b2evolution, from b2/CafeLog.
• aMule, from xMule, which itself forked from lMule shortly before, over developer disagreements.
• 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.
• The Inkscape vector-graphics program started as a fork of Sodipodi.
• NeoOffice is 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.
• sK1, from Skencil when the latter moved from Tk to GTK+.
• The Safari renderer that became WebKit, from KHTML.
• WordPress, from b2/CafeLog.
• Zen Cart, from osCommerce.

2004

• Baz, the previous version of Bazaar, from GNU arch.
• WineX (later Cedega) was a proprietary fork of (software).
• Dokeos, from Claroline.
• MediaPortal, from XBMC.
• FrostWire, from LimeWire after LimeWire's developers considered adding RIAA-sponsored blocking code.
• 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

• Audacious, from Beep Media Player to continue work on the old version of that project.
• Joomla, from Mambo due to concerns over project structure.
• RavenNuke, from PHP-Nuke after the latter was proprietised.

2006

• Adempiere is a community maintained fork of Compiere 2.5.3b, due to disagreement with commercial and technical direction of Compiere Inc.
• LedgerSMB, from SQL-Ledger, due to disagreements over handling of security issues.
• MindTouch Core is a fork of MediaWiki.
• Mulgara, from Kowari after trademark threats from Northrop Grumman.

2007

• Batavi, from osCommerce, due to that project's slow release schedule.

2008

• 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

• 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.
• kompoZer, from Nvu after that project went dormant.
• MariaDB from MySQL, over concern as to Sun Microsystems' plans for the latter.
• Qt Extended Improved, from Qtopia after the latter was discontinued by Qt Software.
• SciPlore MindMapping, from FreeMind.
• Voddler is a proprietary fork of XBMC and FFmpeg.

2010

• Chamilo, from Dokeos, due to community management concerns with that project.
• LibreOffice from OpenOffice.org, due to Oracle Corporation's perceived neglect of the software.
• OpenIndiana, from OpenSolaris after Oracle Corporation discontinued the latter.
• webtrees, from PhpGedView, due to SourceForge's policy on exporting encryption.
• Xonotic, from Nexuiz, after that project was taken proprietary.

2011

• 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.