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Sourceforge Hijacks the Nmap Sourceforge Account

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Re: Sourceforge Hijacks the Nmap Sourceforge Account

#81

Post by maxst »

mintplant wrote: post #64
maxst wrote: post #57

What about all the other websites? http://filehippo.com/download_nmap http://www.softpedia.com/get/Network-Tools/Misc-Networking-T... http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/nmap_security_scanne... http://www.chip.de/downloads/Nmap_13013407.html

It feels a bit different here, at least to me. Nmap had a Sourceforge account, but now it's been taken away from them -- "hijacked", as the post describes it. And Sourceforge at least used to be a reputable site and has (had?) some lingering aura of trust around it.

They had this "You Can Take Over Abandoned Projects" policy for years:

https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/documentation/Abandoned%20Pr...

I took over APNG project in 2011, nice short name, it was really abandoned, and I don't feel bad about it:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/apng/

Re: Sourceforge Hijacks the Nmap Sourceforge Account

#83

Post by robin_reala »

bad_user wrote: post #74
simias wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know they did this at this scale. I'm suprised by all the big names in the projects they've highjacked: I see apache, drupal, firefox, libreoffice, mysql, postgresql, redmine, sqlite, thunderbird, vlc, virtualbox and many, many others. They're really going all in with that.

From what I remember, even though Firefox is open-source, you can't use the Firefox name on distributing it without getting approval from Mozilla. This is why Debian went at some point with the Iceweasel name. So Mozilla controls what gets distributed with the Firefox name and they could sue for trademark violations if they want to. IMHO, all open-source projects should protect their name. For example last time I tri…

(VLC is back: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vlc-for-ios/id650377962)

Re: Sourceforge Hijacks the Nmap Sourceforge Account

#84

Post by scrollaway »

pjc50 wrote: post #43
ghshephard wrote: post #14

This is the sort of behavior you get from a company that's lost, and is now trying to extract every penny they can from whatever shenanigans they can get away with. If they have no future brand value to be concerned about, then, from a game-theoretic approach, it's actually a pretty rational profit seeking move. (As long as they don't incur any downstream liabilities from outright illegal activity for which they migh…

You either go bankrupt as a hero or live long enough to become the monetisation villain.

This is a bit controversial because people like to remember Sourceforge fondly for some reason, but it was never good. It was merely unchallenged.

Google Code was never good either, but people gladly moved from SF to Google Code. And when something actually good came along (Github), Sourceforge simply vanished.

Sourceforge was never a hero. It was a horrible website, with horrible UX. It always had pretty terrible ads and for the past couple of years it has been repeatedly abusing its users' trust, serving malware, been involved in countless drama.

Glad it's gone.

Re: Sourceforge Hijacks the Nmap Sourceforge Account

#86

Post by K0nserv »

ghshephard wrote: post #19
nononononono wrote: post #13

So what decent release tarball storage services are there today if github's autogenerated release tarballs don't do it for you?

Given that a VPS like Digital Ocean will give you 1 Terabyte/month for $5/month, isn't it straightforward to hose your own tarball now? I see the nmap tarball is 20 Megabytes = 50,000 downloads. The cost of hosting should be easily covered by your user base.

DigitalOcean feels wrong for this purpose since they provided VPS not storage per se. I would suggest hosting the website on Digital Ocean, github or something similar and hosting files on S3 or some similar service that specializes in storing files rather than providing VPSs.

Re: Sourceforge Hijacks the Nmap Sourceforge Account

#87

Post by pron »

bad_user wrote: post #68
pjc50 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You either go bankrupt as a hero or live long enough to become the monetisation villain.

Sounds like a wise saying that I've read on every submission about Sourceforge, problem is that I think it is in general bullshit. If we'll look down in history, I think there are very few villains that have acted as heroes when starting out. The signs that such companies are assholes are in general there, from the start. As an example, I don't remember a time in which Sourceforge was the hero, as much as I try. Sinc…

> I think there are very few villains that have acted as heroes when starting out.

The logical implication in that line flows in the other direction. It's not that every villain started out a hero, but that every hero (that survives long enough) ends up a villain. Of course, it's untestable as there's no limit on "long enough", but then again, it's just a line from a movie...

Re: Sourceforge Hijacks the Nmap Sourceforge Account

#88

Post by yc1010 »

scrollaway wrote: post #84
pjc50 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You either go bankrupt as a hero or live long enough to become the monetisation villain.

This is a bit controversial because people like to remember Sourceforge fondly for some reason, but it was never good. It was merely unchallenged. Google Code was never good either, but people gladly moved from SF to Google Code. And when something actually good came along (Github), Sourceforge simply vanished. Sourceforge was never a hero. It was a horrible website, with horrible UX. It always had pretty terrible ad…

Whats worse is that they never had to spend a penny on hosting opensource files, the likes of HEANET in Ireland paid out of their pocket (well me and other Irish taxpayers did in end) to host terabytes of files and use gigabits on downloads at a time when bandwidth was expensive (10 years back bandwidth was a lot more and HEAnets downloads were always fast and I know the guys used a lot of hardware back then for the mirror to support open source).

Re: Sourceforge Hijacks the Nmap Sourceforge Account

#89

Post by dpacmittal »

omegafail wrote: post #45
smegel wrote: post #42

Sourceforge is now on my personal blocklist for Google search results. Along with expertsexchange which I added years ago, and Quora which may surprise some.

Even Quora? :-) I think they removed the logged-in requirement. At least I have been able to see every answer even though I never registered.

You can see the answer if you go to the page via a google search result. If a friend sends you a link, they block the answer with that annoying login modal.

Re: Sourceforge Hijacks the Nmap Sourceforge Account

#90

Post by jpatokal »

scrollaway wrote: post #84
pjc50 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You either go bankrupt as a hero or live long enough to become the monetisation villain.

This is a bit controversial because people like to remember Sourceforge fondly for some reason, but it was never good. It was merely unchallenged. Google Code was never good either, but people gladly moved from SF to Google Code. And when something actually good came along (Github), Sourceforge simply vanished. Sourceforge was never a hero. It was a horrible website, with horrible UX. It always had pretty terrible ad…

Your gladness is premature: it's still alive and kicking, if busily shooting at its own feet while it does so.
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