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SourceForge's GitHub Importer

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Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#71

Post by loganabbott »

craftyguy wrote: post #68
loganabbott wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel bad for you because you (naively?) have no idea about what you're talking about. We bought the ship to save it. You can give us flak if you want, but we felt strongly enough about the projects on SourceForge to put our neck on the line to save it. Didn't see anyone else doing that, despite their complaints.

Yea, publicly attacking folks is a sure way to get yourself more users! /s

I don't think "attacking" means what you think it means. Why do you keep posting the same comment over and over?

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#72

Post by gremlinsinc »

mbfg wrote: post #29

Setting aside the malware issue, and the project graveyard smell, and just looking at it like a new platform, the design just seems all wrong. The big comic ui elements are ugly and unprofessional, and the code is too hidden, not the central point of the project.

This! I didn't use it enough for the malware thing to anger me much, when it hit, I was already mostly using things from github, and sometimes bitbucket...

The design of sourceforge feels spammy and like early 2k's hotscripts or cnet/downloads.com. I want to click on a project and see the readme and a list of their files so I know what framework/language it's built on from a glance, is it node/php/rails?

I've been playing with gitlab a lot lately for my own projects, I love the way I can easily segment things by groups without doling out cash for my side projects and private repos are nice. You get a lot on their free tier.

Though a lot of my github usage is browsing projects for things I can use in my own code, like admin panels, or integrations of vue/react, vuex/mobx, an auth flavor and x web-framework.

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#73

Post by loganabbott »

tazard wrote: post #66
loganabbott wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have nothing to do with the previous owners. In fact, FileZilla from their own official site still has a bundled installer, but we made them remove it from SourceForge. SourceForge FileZilla is cleaner than the official site. Check VirusTotal to verify.

That's really interesting. Thanks for pointing this out. You (sourceforge) have been getting a lot of, imo, unfair flack in this thread and I just wanted to say thanks. Honestly sourceforge isn't the first place I think of when I need to host code, but I have downloaded a few projects from there in a past weeks and it was much nicer than I remember. Ill make a point to check it out one of these days :)

Thanks. I appreciate it.

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#74

Post by loganabbott »

true_religion wrote: post #69
craftyguy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, publicly attacking folks is a sure way to get yourself more users! /s

You said his company was permanently cursed. He showed up to cheerfully deny the curse existed, then you called him a liar and said no one important used Sourceforge. Now you say he is “publically attacking” you just by saying you are wrong. Ok. I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and not believe you.

Ahhh logic and reason. Feels like drinking a cold coca cola in the hot sun. Thank you.

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#75

Post by qz3 »

loganabbott wrote: post #64
JohnTHaller wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth pointing out that SourceForge as we knew it back then ceased to exist quite some time ago. SourceForge was sold to DHI Group, Inc. (DICE's parent company) in 2012 and many of the staff were let go as part of the sale. DevShare came into play in 2014 and was originally billed as a way to help open source developers who wanted to sign up earn an income from their open source work. But then it wound up using…

Thanks. Yep we killed the bundled adware and fake download buttons on DAY ONE. Nice to hear that at least some people understand that.

You're obviously very frustrated by how people see the service, but you can't blame them.

The GIMP incident made pretty big news, and for many people, the name "SourceForge" will stay equivalent to a malware-injecting host. Anyone who decided to keep the name should have anticipated that.

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#76

Post by loganabbott »

qz3 wrote: post #75
loganabbott wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Yep we killed the bundled adware and fake download buttons on DAY ONE. Nice to hear that at least some people understand that.

You're obviously very frustrated by how people see the service, but you can't blame them. The GIMP incident made pretty big news, and for many people, the name "SourceForge" will stay equivalent to a malware-injecting host. Anyone who decided to keep the name should have anticipated that.

I'm not frustrated, but these threads show up on HN almost weekly now, with armchair quarterbacks who really are not current on the state of open source opining ill informed opinions. They even know we are new owners who immediately killed all the bad stuff, and still blame us. I cared about SourceForge, so I bought it and removed DevShare, and still get the blame. People know that we having nothing to do with the old owners, but recreational online outrage is fun, so they continue to blame us for saving it. Cognitive dissonance is en vogue right now. I guess if someone's lonely Sunday night is made better by shitting on the people who did everything in their power to save SourceForge, then go for it. I just think people's time can be used better.

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#77

Post by xyrouter »

loganabbott wrote: post #49
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…

This diatribe just tells me Websense and you are not informed on the current state of the open source community. We bought SourceForge in 2016 specifically because we hated what happened with DevShare and killed it on day one. You can continue hating us simply because of the previous owners, but you can probably find better stuff to do with your time. Nobody uses WebSense anymore anyway except for high schools trying…

You are insinuating both Websense and me that we are not informed about the current state of Sourceforge. Insinuating your potential users like this is in poor taste considering you are the president of Sourceforge.

I am very much aware and I followed the HN thread [1] when you acquired Sourceforge and when you commented extensively trying to reassure us that you will turn Sourceforge around. Sure you have made efforts but I think it is quite clear that the good measures you took came a little too late.

Frankly, your comments in that acquisition thread [1] were more balanced and matured. The comments you are posting in this thread are coming off as immature.

You also seem to be misinformed about Websense. Websense and other web application firewalls and content gateways are very much in use in many corporate networks including mine. Looks like I am not the only one with this issue.[2]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11092219

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14388551

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#78

Post by bb88 »

loganabbott wrote: post #76
qz3 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're obviously very frustrated by how people see the service, but you can't blame them. The GIMP incident made pretty big news, and for many people, the name "SourceForge" will stay equivalent to a malware-injecting host. Anyone who decided to keep the name should have anticipated that.

I'm not frustrated, but these threads show up on HN almost weekly now, with armchair quarterbacks who really are not current on the state of open source opining ill informed opinions. They even know we are new owners who immediately killed all the bad stuff, and still blame us. I cared about SourceForge, so I bought it and removed DevShare, and still get the blame. People know that we having nothing to do with the ol…

Maybe change your name from source forge to something else.

You can rehabilitate the brand, but that will probably take a lot more money than just changing the name.

Edited to add:

On the front page I also see "Business VOIP" and "Cloud Storage" and "Internet speed test". Maybe you want to remove those links and focus on software development.

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#79

Post by xyrouter »

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…

> let's just keep crapping on a company no longer under the same ownership

I have no intention of crapping on SourceForge. I am merely making an observation. I think many would agree that users have lost trust in Sourceforge regardless of the history or current state of ownership.

In fact, I used to appreciate loganabbott's (the new president of Sourceforge) attempt to amend SourceForge until today when I see the same person posting insinuating and insulting comments towards potential users.

I have no intention of crapping on SourceForge because SourceForge is largely irrelevant to me. I host my projects on GitHub these days. If GitHub becomes untenable for any reason, I might move to Gitea. But I am definitely not coming back to Sourceforge after seeing these juvenile comments coming off from the president of Sourceforge in this thread. Don't know about others but he has definitely managed to piss me off as a user.

Regarding why Sourceforge gets the kind of flak other companies don't, I have commented about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17281519 (again this is merely a conversation, not a passing of judgement).

Re: SourceForge's GitHub Importer

#80

Post by jchw »

loganabbott wrote: post #40
throwaway2016a wrote: post #2

Does anyone still use SourceForge after they started embedding adware with their download links? I give them credit for being an early innovator and I know they are under new management as of 2016 and supposedly put that behind them[1] but they have permanently lost my trust. [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/under...

Do you know we have nothing to do with the people that made the decisions to do that bad stuff? I, like you, didn't like it, so I bought SourceForge to remove the bad stuff. I still get shit for it. Kinda weird because the people giving me shit didn't put their financial wellness or reputation on the line to fix what they didn't like, but still armchair quarterback about it. It's like someone saw it fit to burn down…

Hi. Much appreciated for your good deed. It's unfortunate that the previous owners put a seemingly permanent black mark on the once-beloved SourceForge brand, but I think you need to not take it personally. Most of us, me included, simply don't know what's going on inside SourceForge, or GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket, our only view in being headlines and rumors.

We can't all be experts, but we all need to make a choice, and "that site that started posting malware" is not a compelling option no matter what happened afterwards. This is super unfortunate, but it's true, and I imagine it's the same reason why web filters and reputation indexes have been unkind.

But I think that's not even the worst problem. SourceForge was definitely on a decline before the adware incident. Like, many of us will feel uneasy about GitHub under MS, and I already don't know how much I trust young venture capitalist funded websites with my important data. Still, GitHub changed the game with their non-advertising-based profit model and now it feels weird to even consider going back. Frankly, I feel a bit dirty when downloading FOSS from a page with ads and a countdown even though SourceForge is not the only one doing that.

Truthfully, I do want to love SourceForge the way we all used to, but I find it challenging. The adware-supported installers just felt like a super evil extension of the profit model SourceForge already had, and the association in my head stuck. I doubt I'm the only one.

None of this is fair to you, the person trying to fix all of this, but of course whether it's fair or not isn't going to matter. Insulting people who aren't giving you a fair shake is probably not going to help your case, though I certainly sympathize with you.

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