SourceForge's GitHub Importer • Hacker News Board

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#51

Post by loganabbott » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 4:27 AM UTC

Nicksil wrote: post #32

xyrouter wrote: post #17

Websense blacklisted Sourceforge after the 2013 DevShare debacle. It has remained blacklisted since. It is blacklisted in many other web application firewalls and content gateways too. Sourceforge is inaccessible from many corporate networks due to this. It will remain inaccessible for many more years to come. It's unfortunate how Sourceforge, once a leader in the open source community, lost the trust and reputation…

>It may take another 14 years to regain this lost trust and even that may not be enough. That's absolutely absurd given how often the biggest names in 'tech' make headlines with one egregious act or another, on a seemingly weekly basis, and continue to march on. As if the tech community can sit atop some moral high ground, thumbing its nose at SourceForge. But nah, let's just keep crapping on a company no longer unde…

Ahhhh logic and reason. Fascinating. Thank you.

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#52

Post by loganabbott » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 4:29 AM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #11

Gotta feel bad for SourceForge the new owners reversed the malpractices of its previous owners immediately and yet the damage is permanently done. I'll never understand why some think distributing spyware / malware for money is even remotely right in any way, shape, and form. How is any of it legal half the time...

Why would you feel bad for us? We removed the malpractices right away, became profitable, improved the experience for over a million daily users, and are growing at a rate not seen since before the problems. I'd say we have the opposite of a problem. A few random armchair quarterbacks on Hackers News aren't gonna get us down.

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#53

Post by loganabbott » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 4:30 AM UTC

JohnTHaller wrote: post #36

dpark wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SourceForge gets shunned first because it’s easy. There are lots of great alternatives to SourceForge. SourceForge was already on the decline before their adware bundling fiasco so continuing to not use SourceForge is no burden for most devs. Second, what SourceForge did was worse than your examples. They modified trusted applications to add essentially a malware payload. This is worse than Facebook collecting too mu…

It's worth noting that SourceForge didn't modify trusted applications. They switched their download buttons on the site to download an "installer app" by default that would act as the installer, offer bundleware, and then live download the actual app installer as part of the install process. Apps like GIMP etc were never, to my knowledge, modified to bundle GIMP and bundleware within a single installer. Source: I was…

My company had nothing to do with it, but it's worth noting you're one of the few people who actually remembers the actual non-revisionist history.

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#54

Post by loganabbott » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 4:33 AM UTC

tdeck wrote: post #16

jimrandomh wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually worse than that. As an open-source developer deciding where to host a project, I not only need to trust the host, I also need to expect users to also trust the host. If I expect 10% of potential users to bounce when they see that it's hosted on Sourceforge, well, hosting is enough of a commodity that I have no reason to give up on that 10%.

In addition to the malware issues, when I land on a SourceForge project that pretty much tells me "this project is dead or on life support" nine times out of ten.

No malware issues since 2016 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/under...

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#55

Post by duxup » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 4:34 AM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #35

duxup wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now thats a name I haven't heard in a long time... a long time.... But yes ;)

I haven't thought about kuro5hin in years. rip.

pours out some bits

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#56

Post by craftyguy » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 4:38 AM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #11

Gotta feel bad for SourceForge the new owners reversed the malpractices of its previous owners immediately and yet the damage is permanently done. I'll never understand why some think distributing spyware / malware for money is even remotely right in any way, shape, and form. How is any of it legal half the time...

I feel bad for them because they (naiively?) bought a sinking ship.

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#57

Post by loganabbott » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 4:38 AM UTC

mandeepj wrote: post #27

giancarlostoro wrote: post #11

Gotta feel bad for SourceForge the new owners reversed the malpractices of its previous owners immediately and yet the damage is permanently done. I'll never understand why some think distributing spyware / malware for money is even remotely right in any way, shape, and form. How is any of it legal half the time...

New owners should have rebranded it to drop the baggage

Other than these uninformed HN threads, most people can distinguish between the owners that did the bad stuff, and the owners that bought it specifically to undo the bad stuff.

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#58

Post by craftyguy » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 4:39 AM UTC

loganabbott wrote: post #52

giancarlostoro wrote: post #11

Gotta feel bad for SourceForge the new owners reversed the malpractices of its previous owners immediately and yet the damage is permanently done. I'll never understand why some think distributing spyware / malware for money is even remotely right in any way, shape, and form. How is any of it legal half the time...

Why would you feel bad for us? We removed the malpractices right away, became profitable, improved the experience for over a million daily users, and are growing at a rate not seen since before the problems. I'd say we have the opposite of a problem. A few random armchair quarterbacks on Hackers News aren't gonna get us down.

... which is exactly what you're expected to say. It's extremely rare to come across any meaningful projects these days that decide to associate themselves with sourceforge.

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#59

Post by loganabbott » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 4:39 AM UTC

dpark wrote: post #25

tdeck wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to the malware issues, when I land on a SourceForge project that pretty much tells me "this project is dead or on life support" nine times out of ten.

This is true for me as well. SourceForge stopped being the host for anything I cared about years ago. If I land on SourceForge today because they host project X that might solve my problem, I generally start looking for project Y somewhere else.

That doesn't really make any sense today though.

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#60

Post by loganabbott » Mon, Jun 11, 2018, 4:41 AM UTC

craftyguy wrote: post #58

loganabbott wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you feel bad for us? We removed the malpractices right away, became profitable, improved the experience for over a million daily users, and are growing at a rate not seen since before the problems. I'd say we have the opposite of a problem. A few random armchair quarterbacks on Hackers News aren't gonna get us down.

... which is exactly what you're expected to say. It's extremely rare to come across any meaningful projects these days that decide to associate themselves with sourceforge.

That just tells me your breadth of knowledge of the open source landscape is limited. You can scroll down this thread to see plenty of big projects still at SourceForge.