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A Brief History of SourceForge, and a Look Towards the Future

sourceforge.net

11–20 of 76 posts

Re: A Brief History of SourceForge, and a Look Towards the Future

#11
To me, this is just another website. There is no history, that was burned when it became an enormous cash grab. I understand they've been making a lot of changes, but if they want tabula rasa, then they have it -- and they have to offer something that entices people to use the product, not rely on the name they inherited.

Re: A Brief History of SourceForge, and a Look Towards the Future

#12
At least it does not belong to Microsoft yet. That seems to be important for some people. ;-) (I actually laughed when I saw that SourceForge has a GitHub importer now... SourceForge! Ha!)

On a more serious note: SourceForge has surely improved a lot, including not shipping malware anymore. The only things that I'd improve are:

1) More reliable SVN servers. Yes, I "still" have SVN projects on SourceForge because I lack motivation to change either the VCS or the hoster. But SourceForge's servers sometimes don't like my attempts to pull from or push to them. I blame the server admins, not the VCS.

2) A better code view. Just like Bitbucket's, SourceForge's code view (especially for diffs) is a mess. That's the one big thing I always liked with GitHub: Reading and comparing commits is perfectly clean.

3) A better project page. It always takes me a while to find the "Code" link on those - although it's always in a similar place.

Good luck, SourceForge.

Re: A Brief History of SourceForge, and a Look Towards the Future

#14
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the new ownership fire every developer and middle manager? If not, that means there are folks at the “new” sourceforge that are perfectly happy bundling malware with OSS downloads. It was not addressed in the article at all so I’m not buying what they’re selling.

They do mention removing bundled installers and implementing virus scans, both of which seem targeted at removing malware from the site.

I think the issue was that people who thought that bundling malware was ok, are still employed there.

Re: A Brief History of SourceForge, and a Look Towards the Future

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do mention removing bundled installers and implementing virus scans, both of which seem targeted at removing malware from the site.

I think the issue was that people who thought that bundling malware was ok, are still employed there.

Not necessarily with any responsibilities though.

Re: A Brief History of SourceForge, and a Look Towards the Future

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue was that people who thought that bundling malware was ok, are still employed there.

Not necessarily with any responsibilities though.

If you're employed somewhere, you have responsibilities. Otherwise what's the point?

Re: A Brief History of SourceForge, and a Look Towards the Future

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily with any responsibilities though.

If you're employed somewhere, you have responsibilities. Otherwise what's the point?

If I'm a mere employee, my chance to decide about what happens around me (or on my employer's website) might be limited.

Re: A Brief History of SourceForge, and a Look Towards the Future

#20
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.
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