What connotation does "to fork one's repo" have?

Solution 1:

Fork sounds like fuck.

If you need to make a vulgar joke, it doesn't really matter if the rest of it makes sense. Just being made in context of other vulgar jokes may be enough. (Whether it was intended as a joke, vulgar or otherwise, is another matter.)

Forking a repo is legitimate software terminology. It means to take a copy of another person or group's software (repository) so as to continue development independently. There may be the intention of contributing your changes back at a later date, or the fork may represent a split or schism in the developer community, with different aims.

As an extreme example, here's a diagram of Linux distribution forks, from Wikipedia:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg/131px-Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg.png

Forking someone's repo certainly can be praise. It's validation not only that their software is useful for you, but that you want to help continue it's development, and often voluntarily.

This use of fork has been in use since 1980 and the diagram shows it naturally follows on from earlier uses such as a fork in the road.

In 1605 J. Sylvester wrote the earliest known example of this particular fork as a verb:

In two faire Branches forking fruitfully.

Solution 2:

I think the inappropriateness of "forking one's repo" stems from the way it is phrased. I'd never seen fork applied to a repo before (maybe others have), only to projects, so for example someone might say:

I've forked Linux.

The way they've phrased it, though, is more like:

I've forked Torvald's repo.

Which does sound a lot more sexual, as you can easily imagine repo standing for any "forkable" body part.

Given that telling women that they're fuckable is a widespread sexist "praise" (it equates their value with their sexual desirableness), given that the fired guy considered telling that someone's repo was forkable was a praise, and given the close correspondence between the two idioms, I cannot see how saying it the way they did could not be sexist, though I doubt they were conscious of it.

Furthermore, in the specific case of the fired guy saying:

The sexual context was applied by Adria, and not us.

It is incorrect. Adria said:

He said he would be interested in forking the repo and continuing development.

That would have been fine until the guy next to him […] began making sexual forking jokes.

So she clearly didn't ascribe a sexual innuendo to the original use (though, as shown by the beginning of my post, I think it is there, albeit subconsciously).

What I would like to know is how did they go from "forking someone's repo" to a sexual joke about big dongles without an intermediate step of an overtly sexual forking joke. It's not like forking a project (or a repo) and hardware dongles have anything in common that would link them.

Nothing in this episode warrants anybody losing their job or getting rape and death threat.