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24-422: SmartSuite is no longer supported or maintained. SmartSuite used to be in maintenance mode , and supported with fixes and fixpacks on Windows 2000 and Windows XP . SmartSuite is not officially supported by IBM on versions of Windows after XP, but it does work very well on both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista , Windows 7 , Windows 8.1 , Windows 10 and Windows 11 . eComStation 1.0 included

48-448: A word processor for IBM PC compatible machines and Macintosh computers. Generally, such internal forks will concentrate on having the same look, feel, data format, and behavior between platforms so that a user familiar with one can also be productive or share documents generated on the other. This is almost always an economic decision to generate a greater market share and thus pay back the associated extra development costs created by

72-548: 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 Berkeley Software Distributions (BSDs) (1993–1994); Russ Nelson used the term "shattering" for this sort of fork in 1993, attributing it to John Gilmore . However, "fork"

96-529: A fork, with examples: Distributed revision control (DVCS) tools have popularised a less emotive use of the term "fork", blurring the distinction with "branch". With a DVCS such as Mercurial or Git , the normal way to contribute to a project, is to first create a personal branch of the repository, independent of the main repository, and later seek to have your changes integrated with it. Sites such as GitHub , Bitbucket and Launchpad provide free DVCS hosting expressly supporting independent branches, such that

120-540: A proprietary grant in the form of a Contributor License Agreement .) Examples include macOS (based on the proprietary NeXTSTEP and the open source FreeBSD ), Cedega and CrossOver (proprietary forks of Wine , though CrossOver tracks Wine and contributes considerably), EnterpriseDB (a fork of PostgreSQL , adding Oracle compatibility features ), Supported PostgreSQL with their proprietary ESM storage system, and Netezza's proprietary highly scalable derivative of PostgreSQL. Some of these vendors contribute back changes to

144-429: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Fork (software development) In software engineering , a project fork happens when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct and separate piece of software. The term often implies not merely a development branch , but also a split in the developer community; as such, it

168-489: Is a form of schism . Grounds for forking are varying user preferences and stagnated or discontinued development of the original software. Free and open-source software is that which, by definition, may be forked from the original development team without prior permission, and without violating copyright law. However, licensed forks of proprietary software ( e.g. Unix ) also happen. The word "fork" has been used to mean "to divide in branches, go separate ways" as early as

192-427: Is deemed unnecessary or ill-advised, but occasional bug fixes and security patches are still issued, hence the term maintenance mode. Maintenance mode often transitions to abandonware . In the world of software maintenance , it refers to the operational mode a device or service may enter when it is being maintained. For example, while diagnosing, reconfiguring, repairing, upgrading or testing it may be necessary for

216-418: Is sometimes made when the forked software is designed to be a drop-in replacement for the original project, e.g. MariaDB for MySQL or LibreOffice for OpenOffice.org . The BSD licenses permit forks to become proprietary software, and copyleft proponents say that commercial incentives thus make proprietisation almost inevitable. (Copyleft licenses can, however, be circumvented via dual-licensing with

240-431: The 14th century. In the software environment, the word evokes the fork system call, which causes a running process to split itself into two (almost) identical copies that (typically) diverge to perform different tasks. In the context of software development, "fork" was used in the sense of creating a revision control " branch " by Eric Allman as early as 1980, in the context of Source Code Control System : Creating

264-556: The IBM PC Company with higher prices, a late license for Windows 95, and the withholding of technical and marketing support." Microsoft did not grant IBM OEM rights for Windows 95 until 15 minutes prior to the release of Windows 95, August 24, 1995. Because of this uncertainty, IBM machines were sold without Windows 95, while Compaq , HP , and other indulgent companies sold machines with Windows 95 from day one. Maintenance mode The meaning of maintenance mode depends on

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288-706: The IBM website. In May 2013, IBM announced the withdrawal of SmartSuite. Marketing of the product ended in June 2013, followed by all support ceasing in September 2014. IBM has also announced that there will be no replacement for SmartSuite. The following applications are included in SmartSuite for Microsoft Windows : Most SmartSuite programs are capable of reading and writing the corresponding Microsoft Office files. The Microsoft programs, however, are no longer capable of reading formats of

312-671: The Lotus programs (the latest version that could was 2003). Furthermore, several of the SmartSuite components provide functionality not found in the Microsoft Office suite, for example Lotus FastSite and Lotus SmartCenter. In his finding of facts in United States v. Microsoft , Judge Jackson determined that because of IBM's marketing of Lotus SmartSuite, and other alternatives to Microsoft products (like World Book electronic encyclopedia instead of Microsoft's Encarta ), Microsoft "punished

336-519: The Noosphere , stated that "The most important characteristic of a fork is that it spawns competing projects that cannot later exchange code, splitting the potential developer community". He notes in the Jargon File : Forking is considered a Bad Thing—not merely because it implies a lot of wasted effort in the future, but because forks tend to be accompanied by a great deal of strife and acrimony between

360-538: The OS/2 version of Smartsuite. It was an optional extra in later versions of eComStation. ArcaOS does not include Smartsuite, but is able to run it. In 2007, IBM introduced a new office suite called IBM Lotus Symphony , unrelated to the Lotus Symphony integrated application suite that Lotus previously released. In July 2012 the price for a user licence of Lotus SmartSuite 9.8 was US-$ 342.00 when purchased directly through

384-428: The community project, while some keep their changes as their own competitive advantages. In proprietary software , the copyright is usually held by the employing entity, not by the individual software developers. Proprietary code is thus more commonly forked when the owner needs to develop two or more versions, such as a windowed version and a command line version, or versions for differing operating systems, such as

408-440: The context. In the world of software development , it refers to a point in a computer program 's life when it has reached all of its goals and is generally considered to be "complete" and bug -free. The term can also refer to the point in a software product 's evolution when it is no longer competitive with other products or current with regard to the technology environment it operates within. In both cases, continued development

432-456: The device or service to drop to maintenance mode until its fitness for operational mode is verified. Another use case is deliberately putting the device or service into maintenance mode so that it cannot be used operationally while being maintained. Sometimes, when a popular free software project undergoes a major overhaul, the pre-overhaul version is kept active and put into maintenance mode because it will still be widely used in production for

456-454: The foreseeable future. Project forks can also spawn from programs that go into maintenance mode too soon or have enough developer support for a more advanced version. A good example of this is the vi editor, which was in maintenance mode and forked into Vi IMproved . The Vim fork has many useful features that vi does not, such as syntax highlighting and the ability to have multiple open buffers . This computer-programming -related article

480-454: The larger group, or whoever controls the web site, will retain the full original name and the associated user community. Thus, there is a reputation penalty associated with forking. The relationship between the different teams can be cordial or very bitter. On the other hand, a friendly fork or a soft fork is a fork that does not intend to compete, but wants to eventually merge with the original. Eric S. Raymond , in his essay Homesteading

504-476: The successor groups over issues of legitimacy, succession, and design direction. There is serious social pressure against forking. As a result, major forks (such as the Gnu-Emacs / XEmacs split, the fissioning of the 386BSD group into three daughter projects, and the short-lived GCC/EGCS split) are rare enough that they are remembered individually in hacker folklore. David A. Wheeler notes four possible outcomes of

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528-401: The technical, social and financial barriers to forking a source code repository are massively reduced, and GitHub uses "fork" as its term for this method of contribution to a project. Forks often restart version numbering from numbers typically used for initial versions of programs like 0.0.1, 0.1, or 1.0 even if the original software was at another version such as 3.0, 4.0, or 5.0. An exception

552-463: The whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. 3. Derived Works: The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. In free software, forks often result from a schism over different goals or personality clashes. In a fork, both parties assume nearly identical code bases, but typically only

576-567: 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. Free and open-source software may be legally forked without prior approval of those currently developing, managing, or distributing the software per both The Free Software Definition and The Open Source Definition : The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this, you can give

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