The phrase "fork change" typically refers to a situation where a group of people or developers take an existing software project and create their own separate version by making significant alterations or changes to it. Full definition
This could be a questionable plan, however, since critics contend that developers shouldn't have the power to enforce hard fork changes not everyone in the ecosystem will agree with. (coindesk.com)
[1] The alternate networks may not die off if the hard fork change proposed is a change to the mining algorithm itself. (links2exchange.net)
It will be interesting to see if the upcoming hard fork changes this procedure in any way. (dailybitcoinnews.com)