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> duplicating the source tree That reminds me that "fork" when used as a verb on GitHub's UI should more accurately be "cloud clone". GitHub's terminology has

> duplicating the source tree That reminds me that "fork" when used as a verb on GitHub's UI should more accurately be "cloud clone". GitHub's terminology has muddied the waters between the concept of actual forks (longterm divergent development) and a particular implementation of a permission system for branches.

chrisseaton 8y ago
As soon as you create your own commits on a clone of the repository you then have a 'fork' in the chain of commits.
- frou_dh 8y ago
  That's a second-order observation. We could use any noun for that if and when it's relevant - I suggest alternadoodley. Like I said, "fork" already has a useful meaning with regard to an OSS project, so there's no need to overload it. Is the following sentence not confusing? When you fork on GitHub you create a fork but not every fork is a fork.
  - chc 8y ago
    Every fork is a fork. They're just not all long-lived or significant, which seems to be the distinction you're drawing here.
    - frou_dh 8y ago
      Put it this way, when the user presses the Fork button in the GitHub UI, is their intention to contribute to the project, or is it to create a competitor/alternative to the project. I say the former situation is an obfuscated permission system and the latter is a fork. [ I've gone rather off-topic from TFA so will stop commenting now! ]
- bregma 8y ago
  We used to just call it a 'branch' because it was just another branch in the distributed revision tree. There is nothing special about a branch you create and commit to, whether it's by clicking on a picture on the screen or typing a command in a terminal. Calling a branch a fork is just a water-muddying term probably coined by some suit in marketing who saw the buzzword somewhere in an article on the Internet Explorer and thought they would re-purposed to use as a product differentiator.
  - davedx 8y ago
    It's not the same thing though. A GitHub 'fork' has a different origin than a regular branch.
    - frou_dh 8y ago
      It's the third git repository, which is on your own hard drive, that has those.
  - frou_dh 8y ago
    More likely the founders of GitHub were not expecting world domination and so did not consider every ramification of a word choice.
- wtetzner 8y ago
  Isn't that also true of a branch in the same repo?
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    Yes branching is done in Git by forking the sequence of commits into two? Giving you your own fork of the software.

chrisseaton 8y ago

As soon as you create your own commits on a clone of the repository you then have a 'fork' in the chain of commits.

frou_dh 8y ago
That's a second-order observation. We could use any noun for that if and when it's relevant - I suggest alternadoodley. Like I said, "fork" already has a useful meaning with regard to an OSS project, so there's no need to overload it. Is the following sentence not confusing? When you fork on GitHub you create a fork but not every fork is a fork.
- chc 8y ago
  Every fork is a fork. They're just not all long-lived or significant, which seems to be the distinction you're drawing here.
  - frou_dh 8y ago
    Put it this way, when the user presses the Fork button in the GitHub UI, is their intention to contribute to the project, or is it to create a competitor/alternative to the project. I say the former situation is an obfuscated permission system and the latter is a fork. [ I've gone rather off-topic from TFA so will stop commenting now! ]
bregma 8y ago
We used to just call it a 'branch' because it was just another branch in the distributed revision tree. There is nothing special about a branch you create and commit to, whether it's by clicking on a picture on the screen or typing a command in a terminal. Calling a branch a fork is just a water-muddying term probably coined by some suit in marketing who saw the buzzword somewhere in an article on the Internet Explorer and thought they would re-purposed to use as a product differentiator.
- davedx 8y ago
  It's not the same thing though. A GitHub 'fork' has a different origin than a regular branch.
  - frou_dh 8y ago
    It's the third git repository, which is on your own hard drive, that has those.
- frou_dh 8y ago
  More likely the founders of GitHub were not expecting world domination and so did not consider every ramification of a word choice.
wtetzner 8y ago
Isn't that also true of a branch in the same repo?
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  Yes branching is done in Git by forking the sequence of commits into two? Giving you your own fork of the software.