Solving the “Zork” Mystery

General jargon like foobar is not that far off in meaning from "unfinished software". I think it's possible there's not really a contradiction between the different sources. The "unfinished software" meaning in the NYT article might have just been an example of one possible use of a more general nonsense word.

Before I came across Zork, I thought I was quite intelligent...

Clearly “zork” is a mispronunciation of “source”. ;)

I looked into the well known triva about name of most popular text adventure.