Definition of “downstream” and “upstream”

Question

I\'ve started playing with Git and have come across the terms \"upstream\" and \"downstream\". I\'ve seen these before but never understood them fully. What do these terms

Answer 1

That's a bit of informal terminology.

As far as Git is concerned, every other repository is just a remote.

Generally speaking, upstream is where you cloned from (the origin). Downstream is any project that integrates your work with other works.

The terms are not restricted to Git repositories.

For instance, Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, so Debian is upstream for Ubuntu.