31–40 of 76 posts
While redesigning the site was undoubtedly a good step, it still feels a bit "off" to me, anyone else?
History of SourceForge according to me: - forced users to look at ads and go through two steps in order to download projects - when that was not enough, injected malware into the files users were downloading - irrecoverably lost project information I don’t think they can do anything to salvage their image at this point. The last incident didn’t even inflict too much damage because there wasn’t much left to SourceForg…
Now, if you were in this situation and you decided to come back to the old project a few years later (we're now in the early 2000's) wouldn't you expect to be able to continue where you left off?
Not so with Sourceforge. I found that the entire project was deleted. I contacted them and got the answer that it was indeed deleted because it hadn't been touched in however many years it had been.
To give credit where credit is due, they were actually able to recover my code from a backup and restore the project.
The point of this post was just to point out that they've done some user hostile things for a very long time.
This sentence: "We have the most robust search and discovery system of any open source repository on the web, and offer an unparalleled experience for end-users looking for software binaries they can download and install with the click of a button."
They just don't work developers, they work for (unsuspecting) ERM software users, in capacity of an open-source app store. That's why it can succeed - if one makes a CRM software, he might mirror there in hope to be stumbled upon by category browsers.
edit: some grammar
If SF wants to attract developers, they should support alternative version control systems like fossil and darcs. I can't think of any reason to use SF for a new project except possibly that you use mercurial and don't like bitbucket. The market for git hosting is extremely competitive and they don't bring much to the table.
If SF wants to attract developers, they should support alternative version control systems like fossil and darcs. I can't think of any reason to use SF for a new project except possibly that you use mercurial and don't like bitbucket. The market for git hosting is extremely competitive and they don't bring much to the table.
That means a UI that has to take into account the idiosyncrasies of different tools. It seems like a recipe for disaster, if focus is what SF needs now.
who even owns sourceforge now? it's like coming across an antique toy, who knows how many garage sales and antique stores it must have been living in over the decades - a quick google reminds me it's been at least owned by VA Software, Geeknet, Dice.com (!) and now apparently some company called BIZX. from a usability standpoint, including the release process, the mailing list, and everything else, the site was alway…
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=loganabbott
There was an article about their (last?) acquisition a couple of years ago where they commented at some length.
- What do VoIP and Internet Speed Test have to do with what they do.
- I wish they have a business model that is not selling ads or my personal information to others. As long as they do that, it is hard to trust them, especially with their malware past.
- Who are their target users, is it me (a developer) or someone else?
- Why do they equate free to open source. Free means so much more in for developers. I use open source despite it being free to use, but because I know I can use it in interesting ways if I need to.