Re: What counts as a fork?

[Paige DePol <lual@...>]

Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2017-11-28 22:49 GMT+02:00 Dibyendu Majumdar <mobile@majumdar.org.uk>:
>> On 28 November 2017 at 20:44, Jay Carlson <nop@nop.com> wrote:
>>> Is Lua 5.2 a fork of Lua 5.1?
>> 
>> In my view, yes.
> 
> You have been forced into saying that by your earlier definition of a
> fork, which was inadequate. It should have included "not in the
> mainstream of Lua development". Lua 5.2 is not a fork of Lua 5.1, it
> is the successor to Lua 5.1.

I would have to agree, I don't count successors to a previous version of
software as being a fork. Later versions of Lua most likely start off as
branches, which in essence are a type of fork by the project developers.
However, since the original developers are creating the fork it is just
referred to as a branch of development typically. 

In the history of Lua has the language ever been completely re-written
from scratch, or has it always just built upon previous versions?

~Paige