List of software forks

Short description: none

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

This is a list of notable software forks.

A timeline chart of how Linux distributions forked. The three largest trees are (from top) Debian, SLS and Red Hat.

## Contents

* 1 Undated
* 2 1981
* 3 1985
* 4 1990
* 5 1991
* 6 1993
* 7 1995
* 8 1997
* 9 1998
* 10 1999
* 11 2000
* 12 2001
* 13 2002
* 14 2003
* 15 2004
* 16 2005
* 17 2006
* 18 2007
* 19 2008
* 20 2009
* 21 2010
* 22 2011
* 23 2012
* 24 2013
* 25 2014
* 26 2015
* 27 2016
* 28 2017
* 29 2018
* 30 2019
* 31 2021
* 32 2022
* 33 2023
* 34 2024
* 35 See also
* 36 References

## 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 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

* 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

* POSTGRES (later PostgreSQL), after Ingres branched off as a proprietary project.

## 1990

* Microsoft SQL Server, from Sybase SQL Server, via a technology-sharing agreement concerning the Tabular Data Stream protocol.
* 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, a fork of NetBSD 1.0 by Theo de Raadt due to internal developer personality clashes.

## 1997

* EGCS was a fork of GCC, later named 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.
* 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

* 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

* 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

* 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

* 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

* 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

* 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

* 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

* Go-oo, from OpenOffice.org, due to that project's contributor licensing agreement.

## 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.
* 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

* 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

* 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

* MPC-BE, a fork of Media Player Classic

## 2013

* Blink, a fork of WebKit.
* SuiteCRM, from the last open source version of SugarCRM.

## 2014

* 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

* EdgeHTML, from Trident
* Open Live Writer, from Windows Live Writer 2012

## 2016

* Collabora Online, from LibreOffice, Collabora Online is a web-based enterprise ready edition of LibreOffice
* Goanna, from Gecko
* Nextcloud, from ownCloud
* LineageOS, from CyanogenMod

## 2017

* Bitcoin Cash, from Bitcoin Core, supported by the forked implementations Bitcoin ABC, Bitcoin Unlimited and Bitcoin XT.
* Unified XUL Platform, from XUL.[10][11]

## 2018

* Basilisk, from Firefox.

## 2019

* Trino, from Presto.[12]

## 2021

* BuzzlyArt, from Artrise
* Floorp, a free and open-source web browser based on Firefox.

## 2022

* Angie, from Nginx.[13]

## 2023

* OpenTofu, from Terraform.[14]

## 2024

* Freenginx, from Nginx.
* Valkey, from Redis[15]
* CoMaps, from Organic Maps[16]

## See also

* List of Lisp-family programming languages

## References

1. ↑ MIT Lisp Machine License Signed Press Release October 1980
2. ↑ Richard Stallman, My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "OpenSSH Project History". OpenSSH. 2016-04-20. http://www.openssh.com/history.html. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
4. ↑ Corbet, Jonathan (2006-08-12). "cdrtools - a tale of two licenses". LWN.net. https://lwn.net/Articles/195167/. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
5. ↑ Jaspert, Joerg (2006-09-04). "cdrkit (fork of cdrtools) uploaded to Debian, please test". debian-devel-announce. Debian. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/09/msg00002.html. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
6. ↑ "RM: cdrtools -- RoM: non-free, license problems". Debian. 2006-01-31. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=377109. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
7. ↑ "Change log of release date from MPC-HC project". https://trac.mpc-hc.org/wiki/Changelog.
8. ↑ "Frequently Asked Questions". Icinga. https://www.icinga.org/resources/faq/. Retrieved 2016-08-03.
9. ↑ "Jigoshop Rise and Fall - How Did It Come to End of Jigoshop eCommerce Plugin?". 27 April 2020. https://www.kasareviews.com/jigoshop-review-end-of-jigoshop-ecommerce/.
10. ↑ "README for the initial, deprecated UXP repository on GitHub". https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/moebius/blob/master/README.md. Retrieved 2018-04-25.
11. ↑ "REMADE for the current UXP repository on GitHub". https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/UXP/blob/v2018.04.23/README.md. Retrieved 2018-04-25.
12. ↑ Phillips, David; Sundstrom, Dain; Traverso, Martin (27 December 2020). "We're rebranding PrestoSQL as Trino" (in en). https://trino.io/blog/2020/12/27/announcing-trino.html.
13. ↑ Darkcrizt (2022-11-03). "Angie, the Nginx fork created by developers who left F5" (in en). https://blog.desdelinux.net/en/angie-the-nginx-fork-created-by-devs-who-ditched-f5/.
14. ↑ "Linux Foundation Launches OpenTofu: A New Open Source Alternative to Terraform". Linux Foundation. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/announcing-opentofu.
15. ↑ "Linux Foundation Launches Open Source Valkey Community". Linux Foundation. 28 March 2024. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launches-open-source-valkey-community.
16. ↑ "Organic Maps Forked Over Governance Concerns: CoMaps is Born" (in en). 2025-05-29. https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/.

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