fork bomb
= F =
Fortrash
forked adj.,vi.
1. [common after 1997, esp. in the Linux
community] An open-source software project is said to have forked
or be forked when the project group fissions into two or more parts
pursuing separate lines of development (or, less commonly, when a
third party unconnected to the project group begins its own line of
development). 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 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 fissionings 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. 2. [Unix; uncommon; prob. influenced by a mainstream
expletive] Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system
was slowed to a snail's pace by an inadvertent fork bomb.
--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.