Etymology
According to Douglas Harper's online etymology dictionary, fork in the meaning of "to divide in branches, go separate ways" has been used as early as 14th century. In the software environment, forking emerged around 1969 with the unix mechanism by which a process split in two by forming an identical copy of itself.
In the context of software development, the first documented use of term "fork" the sense of "branch" by Eric Allman in 1980, to describe forming branches in SCCS:
Creating a branch "forks off" a version of the program.
The term was in use on Usenet by 1983 for the process of creating a subgroup to move topics of discussion to.
"Fork" is not known to have been used in the sense of a community schism during the origins of Lucid Emacs (now XEmacs) (1991) or the BSDs (1993–1994); Russ Nelson used the term "shattering" for this sort of fork in 1993, attributing it to John Gilmore. However, "fork" was in use in the present sense by 1995 to describe the XEmacs split, and was an understood usage in the GNU Project by 1996.
Read more about this topic: Fork (software Development)
Famous quotes containing the word etymology:
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)
“The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)