The previous fork was io.js, it's contributions have now been brought back under the Node.js umbrella. This new fork is almost a non-story by comparison, if it gets even a minor level of traction amongst developers I'll be surprised. Even the repo creator has half-arsed the readme.
io.js forked 2014, planning to keep io.js up-to-date with the V8 engine. Node.js foundation was later founded and later in 2015 io.js and node.js merged into Node 4.0.