Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“It appears that SourceForge took control of the 'GIMP for Windows' account”

plus.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 84 posts

Re: “It appears that SourceForge took control of the 'GIMP for Windows' account”

#41

Post by geofft »

makomk wrote: post #40
geofft wrote: post #14

What are the reasons for people to use SourceForge today? Why hasn't everyone else ( especially major projects like GIMP and Audacity) moved off? Here are some possibilities I can think of, but I'm curious if they're correct: - Mailing list hosting - Non-git repository hosting, for projects that prefer CVS or SVN - Shell account (though it doesn't seem very useful) - Features GitHub has but few others do (binary host…

GIMP did move off Sourceforge back in November 2013[1]. Unfortunately, because there were a bunch of links pointing there it still ranks very highly in searches for GIMP. I'm not sure if there's even any way to delete a Sourceforge project. [1] See the top story on http://www.gimp.org/

You could remove all the installers, replace them with a README.txt, and update the website and project description.

That said, looking at the top story, I guess they consciously chose not to do that and then things went sour.

Re: “It appears that SourceForge took control of the 'GIMP for Windows' account”

#42

Post by geofft »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #30
geofft wrote: post #14

What are the reasons for people to use SourceForge today? Why hasn't everyone else ( especially major projects like GIMP and Audacity) moved off? Here are some possibilities I can think of, but I'm curious if they're correct: - Mailing list hosting - Non-git repository hosting, for projects that prefer CVS or SVN - Shell account (though it doesn't seem very useful) - Features GitHub has but few others do (binary host…

One reason is discoverability as they have a rather extensive searchable directory of open source software. Another reason for quite a while was binary hosting, which github originally supported, then discontinued, but finally added again in July 2013. Additionally, the ability to use any open source license or combinations of licenses, as Google Code supported binary downloads during the time github didn't but only…

Oh right, the other reason I forgot to mention is lack of volunteer time/enthusiasm to deal with a move. If you already bounced between Google Code and SourceForge two years ago, chances are you're probably not completely excited about jumping ship to GitHub right now.

(But yes, right now, if you're on Git, GitHub will give you binary downloads and all licenses.)

Re: “It appears that SourceForge took control of the 'GIMP for Windows' account”

#43

Post by geofft »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #20
baldfat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only issue is that Sourceforge made nice binaries available. Most people have no idea how to use git and/or build their own binaries.

GitHub supports releases w/ binary attachments[0]. I think the only thing they're missing at this point is shell access. [0] https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your-software

What does the SourceForge shell access get you? If it's only the ability to edit your website and maybe your code (and not install, compile, etc. things), is it valuable in a world with git-push-to-deploy and with web-based editors?

Re: “It appears that SourceForge took control of the 'GIMP for Windows' account”

#44

Post by makomk »

geofft wrote: post #41
makomk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GIMP did move off Sourceforge back in November 2013[1]. Unfortunately, because there were a bunch of links pointing there it still ranks very highly in searches for GIMP. I'm not sure if there's even any way to delete a Sourceforge project. [1] See the top story on http://www.gimp.org/

You could remove all the installers, replace them with a README.txt, and update the website and project description. That said, looking at the top story, I guess they consciously chose not to do that and then things went sour.

Doesn't matter. Someone elsewhere in the discussion found out what they're doing - Sourceforge now has a policy of taking over the project pages of projects that've moved off Sourceforge and running the pages themselves as mirrors (apparently with added extras in the installers): http://sourceforge.net/mirror/ If you remove all the installers, they'll just get them off your website instead. If anything, removing everything from the project page would just give them even more of an excuse to take it over.

Re: “It appears that SourceForge took control of the 'GIMP for Windows' account”

#45

Post by sytse »

SwellJoe wrote: post #37
shiggerino wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely hosting static files on the internet is trivial to accomplish these days, even without the help of Malwareforge.

Trivial, technically, but can still be an unwanted cost for projects that push a lot of bits out. Our software at SF.net burns through several terabytes of bandwidth each year for several million package downloads. We've always appreciated their network of mirrors. But, it seems like it's time to move away from SourceForge. We already relocated our revision control to github (though I'm considering another move to a…

GitLab CEO here, glad to hear you're considering using it, please let me know if we can help in any way.

Re: “It appears that SourceForge took control of the 'GIMP for Windows' account”

#46

Post by makomk »

SwellJoe wrote: post #36
ksherlock wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Open Source Mirror Directory is an extension to our existing software directory, where we'll be mirroring projects that are not hosted on SourceForge, and SourceForge projects that have been abandoned. " Why are we doing this? We want the SourceForge software directory to be as useful as possible. When you come here to search for a piece of software, we want you to be able to find it, and find the most up to dat…

So...they're claiming to "maintain" projects, and that means turning them into adware? That's so underhanded and nasty that it's difficult to believe. If true, it means SourceForge has effectively become the nemesis of every software developer who ever used their services. And, it means every software developer who cares about software freedom and privacy must move everything off of SourceForge. We host Webmin on SF.…

Abandoned projects and "projects that are not hosted on SourceForge", which appears to include projects that still have a Sorceforge page that's actively maintained if the project has moved elsewhere. So if you move off SF.net, they'll take over your page there and use it to distribute adware-enhanced versions of your software. Incredibly underhanded.

Re: “It appears that SourceForge took control of the 'GIMP for Windows' account”

#47

Post by SamWhited »

I'll still never understand why people don't move off of SourceForge; GitHub and Bitbucket (among others) are almost feature complete, and for the things that they're missing (mailing lists) there are plenty of free alternatives out there that are fairly easy to port.

Re: “It appears that SourceForge took control of the 'GIMP for Windows' account”

#48

Post by psykovsky »

prokoudine wrote: post #22
psykovsky wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is on there also. Now that is worrying.

It doesn't neccessarily mean all of them are affected, but I think it's a call for a close inspection.

I download the bitcoin .exe, and it came clean, with the right signatures, but who knows how they are distributing the stuff. I have a Ubuntu computer. If they're at least a bit smart they will use their download redirects to serve the spyware only to Windows computers or something, so that could be why I got a clean binary. Bitcoin devs investigated, at my request. They removed the sf-editor1 user from the project owners and checked the binaries to see if sigs matched, and they did. But like I said, they could be filtering who they serve the "spyware" to.

Re: “It appears that SourceForge took control of the 'GIMP for Windows' account”

#49

Post by makomk »

SwellJoe wrote: post #37
shiggerino wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely hosting static files on the internet is trivial to accomplish these days, even without the help of Malwareforge.

Trivial, technically, but can still be an unwanted cost for projects that push a lot of bits out. Our software at SF.net burns through several terabytes of bandwidth each year for several million package downloads. We've always appreciated their network of mirrors. But, it seems like it's time to move away from SourceForge. We already relocated our revision control to github (though I'm considering another move to a…

The thing is, it's not exactly "their" network of mirrors. They mostly rely on third-party mirrors run by universities and other organisations that offer mirroring for free to a bunch of major open source projects and sites.
Post reply on HN