Third, and most importantly, the ability to "fork" or spin off a com pletely new competing line of code is the guarantee that the code is open and available. The possibility of the "fork" means that if in the future some open source project falls into incompetent or malicious hands, or that the original authors don't want to maintain it or upgrade it, there is a choice. It will always be possible for another group to set up a rival program that can upport the same existing customers and interfaces but start to develop in a new direction.