13 ms·

SourceForge Acquisition and Future Plans

279 points by tdurden 11y ago

pbnjay 11y ago
Too little too late. While there are certainly plenty of rarely-updated packages still on SF, many of the good active ones have already left. They'll need significant investment in order to turn things around quickly enough and bring users back. Somewhat hard to believe the ROI will work out though...
- shampine 11y ago
  This exactly. The fact that uBlock Origin has anything from them in their block list is telling. They became the worst, there is no coming back from the that.
  - loganabbott 11y ago
    We will get this resolved. DevShare elimination was just the first step. It's only been 2 weeks. Hopefully you'll see in time we are serious about regaining trust, and are wholly different than the previous owners.
    - dredmorbius 11y ago
      uBlock is the least of yor problems. There are the individual, commercial, and private blocks and hosts files which have been created and which have to be individually cleared. Possibly IP blocks as well. As with "inheriting" a former spammer's domains or IP space for email, that damage is long-lived. Securing a new or alternate donain would be a good investment. While there may be some tech and projects worth continuing, the brand is blighted property.
- zanny 11y ago
  Some stuff I've found that, for some reason, is still on sourceforge: * Pyqt * Supertuxkart * Quakespasm (Really popular Quake 1 engine) * Hammer of Thyrion (Only major Hexen 2 engine) And I'm sure there are more. The later two make some sense - they aren't major projects by any means, and are just hobby engine ports that probably would take a lot of work to bring to gitlab/hub. Pyqt is downright massive, it is the premire GUI toolkit for Python, and for some reason it is still on sourceforge. Supertuxkart is one of the pantheon of really good open source games, and recently got a massive update. And its still on Sourceforge... So there is still a lot to lose if Sourceforge went away. Plenty of projects desperately need to move but have not done so yet for various reasons.
  - ward 11y ago
    NB: I used to help with STK development around 2011-2013, so have a likely biased view in this particular discussion. Actually, SuperTuxKart definitely moved some things away from Sourceforge already. You can find the Github account at https://github.com/supertuxkart https://github.com/supertuxkart. (Finished) assets and their "development" files (blender files, lossless audio, ...) are still on Sourceforge. I have not been actively involved with the project in a few years now, but as far as I am aware this is due to the simply enormous size that assets take up in a game. The finalised assets download is 650MB, the originals is 1.5GB (see http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Source_control http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Source_control). Due to the nature of svn this is only the current HEAD, you can imagine how big of a git repository this would end up becoming, where you by default download the entire repository. (EDIT: Github allows repositories of up to 1GB in size, see https://help.github.com/articles/what-is-my-disk-quota/ https://help.github.com/articles/what-is-my-disk-quota/) Furthermore, up until recently I believe Github severely limited the size of binaries you could upload. You understand this puts them at an impossibility. Also, Sourceforge provides mailing lists, Github does not. The wiki could be moved from Sourceforge to Github, but I do not know if that is a project they currently feel like undertaking. The current setup uses mediawiki and is easy enough for non-developers to update as well as having the same style as the landing page. If you switch to Github wiki, then the style breaks completely with the rest of the STK site. If you switch to a project page by means of the github pages, then you make things (I believe) significantly more difficult to update for the less technically oriented volunteers.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  We will invest what we have to to rebuild trust.
  - ohyeshedid 11y ago
    Removal of DevShare, adding HTTPS, and removal of all the deceptive advertising is a step in the right direction. The next step is to reach out to all the blacklist providers you're listed on and get removed. You guys are shitlisted all over the place, and for good reasons that may no longer apply.
    - loganabbott 11y ago
      Yes you're absolutely right, and we will 100%.
  - pbnjay 11y ago
    Sorry if my comment came off too harsh, I'm honestly very glad to hear it. You have a long uphill battle ahead and I sincerely hope you succeed. There's been too much consolidation onto github for me to be fully happy with my realistic choices.
DonHopkins 11y ago
Rosencrantz: Did you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it? Guildenstern: No. Rosencrantz: Nor do I, really. It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean, one thinks of it like being alive in a box. One keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead, which should make all the difference, shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never know you were in a box, would you? It would be just like you were asleep in a box. Not that I'd like to sleep in a box, mind you. Not without any air. You'd wake up dead for a start, and then where would you be? In a box. That's the bit I don't like, frankly. That's why I don't think of it. Because you'd be helpless, wouldn't you? Stuffed in a box like that. I mean, you'd be in there forever, even taking into account the fact that you're dead. It isn't a pleasant thought. Especially if you're dead, really. Ask yourself, if I asked you straight off, "I'm going to stuff you in this box. Now, would you rather be alive or dead?" naturally, you'd prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance, at least. You could lie there thinking, "Well, at least I'm not dead. In a minute somebody is going to bang on the lid, and tell me to come out." [bangs on lid] Rosencrantz: "Hey you! What's your name? Come out of there!" Guildenstern: [long pause] I think I'm going to kill you.
- EvanPlaice 11y ago
  Bravo
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- loganabbott 11y ago
  Just had a high school english flashback.
rblatz 11y ago
Well, they seem like they get their target audience more than Dice did. If I were them I'd start trying to emulate and improve upon github. Seems like right now would be the time to strike.
- justinclift 11y ago
  Yeah. If they get involved with (say) the GitLab ecosystem, that could both reduce GitHub growth + attract more talent/projects to SourceForge. Both of which they'd be wanting to do.
  - sytse 11y ago
    Anyone is welcome to use GitLab, it would be awesome to see SourceForge switch to it.
- astrodust 11y ago
  A partnership with a company like GitHub, Gitlab, anyone would help considerably.
  - loganabbott 11y ago
    You're right and we will explore these
    - rblatz 11y ago
      I do think that right now github has multiple issues swirling around it, a lot of people and open source projects are looking for alternatives. Sourceforge used to be the place for open source software, the sooner you can offer a compelling alternative to github the more likely you are to win back a lot of dissatisfied github users.
      - astrodust 11y ago
        As much as GitHub has done to antagonize people by being non-responsive on some issues, it has never gone as far as SourceForge has historically. There's a decade of utter indifference there combined with malicious sabotage of popular projects several times over. Going from the frying pan to the fire is hardly the best plan, especially with offerings like Gitlab, Gitorious and Bitbucket readily available.
MegaDeKay 11y ago
At least they are making steps in the right direction... "Our first order of business was to terminate the “DevShare” program. As of last week, the DevShare program was completely eliminated. The DevShare program delivered installer bundles as part of the download for participating projects. We want to restore our reputation as a trusted home for open source software, and this was a clear first step towards that."
- VonGuard 11y ago
  Good fucking riddance.
  - loganabbott 11y ago
    Agreed
- loganabbott 11y ago
  Thanks for the support. Yes we got rid of DevShare within a week of acquiring SourceForge. I think people will realize quickly we are serious about turning it around.
  - gedy 11y ago
    You're getting a lot of snark here, but wanted to say that you coming here and addressing is really helpful in proving you're serious. I have fond memories of SF and keeping some completion in the market is always good.
    - loganabbott 11y ago
      Thanks. We are serious and I do appreciate all the feedback here. Agreed about the competition part as well.
      - chris_wot 11y ago
        Fronting up and participating here counts for a lot. Thanks :-)
bsharitt 11y ago
While it's probably too little too late, it'd be near from a nostalgia perspective to have Sourceforge relevant again. Created in June 2001, my sf account is my oldest internet account I still have access too. They might have an opening against GitHub if the move fast and correctly.
- inopinatus 11y ago
  There is an opening, but the window will close fast and multiple competitors will try to fit through it at once. Their brand recognition is still high. That's about all they've got going. Something spectacular is required to shock this particular dead horse back into life. But I don't give much for their chances. That brand recognition is high for all the wrong reasons. The new president claims a background in digital marketing and content aggregation, not development or developer engagement.
  - cpeterso 11y ago
    Does Sourceforge bring any unique assets besides its name, which is arguably a negative? There does seem to be a current in the air of anti-GitHub or post-GitHub discussions, but GitLab or Bitbucket seem better positioned than Sourceforge to grab that opportunity.
    - mook 11y ago
      sf.net does also do mailing list and shell account, and I _think_ possibly non-static web sites. None of them are for high-volume things, though, as far as I know.
    - ufmace 11y ago
      Their best asset is probably the pile of useful project still hosted there, even if many are more like legacy projects that haven't had any activity in years. The name is probably neutral at best. It has a lot of good memories from older open-source types who remember them putting up something that worked in the early days. But there's also a lot of bad memories from people who remember them mostly for serving malware and deceptive advertising.
kup0 11y ago
Might be too-little too-late, but anything that reduces adware/malware installation possibility is a good thing. It may not be enough to save SF, but at least it's going in a better direction now. Hopefully they will make other significant improvements too.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  Yes we plan to. Rolled out https a few days ago as well.
dredmorbius 11y ago
Go away, you're dead. On the other hand, having a tourism/travel business own Slashdot and Sourceforge is ... kind of an odd fit. Synergy, I suppose. https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/X9hrmBWqjMC https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/X9hr...
- loganabbott 11y ago
  We own hundreds of websites, a very small percentage of which are travel related. Most of them are technology related sites.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  Just read that full Google+ post. Wut?
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    I stand by my statements concerning Slashdot, DICE, and Sourceforge. I had no idea what BIZX LLC was, and the press release DICE provided (linked from my post) gave no information. The travel / tourism information came from BIZX's own website: https://www.bizx.info/ https://www.bizx.info/ https://www.bizx.info/about-bizx https://www.bizx.info/about-bizx As for the name, I call 'em as I see 'em. ".biz" as a TLD has negative equity so far as I'm aware, and BIZX is hardly an improvement on that. I'd suggest considering something more substantial sounding, specific, and trust inspiring.
    - loganabbott 11y ago
      I think the imagery you referenced in your post was a little non-sensical. But okay. Looks like you got quite a few likes and comments on that post so gold star for you.
      - dredmorbius 11y ago
        BIZX have an admittedly inhereted credibility gap to bridge with Slashdot and Sourceforge. That's going to require both openness and getting well out in front of the message. Why a principally tourism-oriented website management firm now has an interest in these two specific, storied, and as noted, tainted properties has some 'splainin' to do. The name doesn't much help. It's not awful, but it's definitely not great. There's little on the principles (I've found ... Rodger, is it? via LinkedIn and Bloomberg), and addressing why they're interested and what you're bringing to the table, and, since this is a business, are hoping to take from it, are valid questions for the community to be asking. Go back to see what the discussion was at the time Dice picked up Slashdot and Sourceforge: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6262347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6262347 From the even more technical Linux Weekly News: https://lwn.net/Articles/564250/ https://lwn.net/Articles/564250/ Or the (minimal) discussion from the announcement DHI were selling them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961783 Or Slashdot itself: http://m.slashdot.org/story/175039 http://m.slashdot.org/story/175039 Among the comments: "Who the hell is going to buy sourceforge at this point? It's not even worth the intellectual property behind the scenes. Maybe someone like cnet who wants another distribution channel for not-quite-malware." Again: I've had at least 17 years' association with Slashdot, and quite nearly as long with Sourceforge. I'm rather skeptical at this point that any private concern can manage them appropriately. It's an uphill battle. If your intentions are good, best luck to you. Don't think it'll be easy, and there are many who may well be hoping to see you stumble. I'm not one of them, but I'm highly dubious of success.
emmelaich 11y ago
I guess Google's blocking of sites that had deceptive download images may have been one of the catalysts for this.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  They did not block us, but all deceptive download buttons are coming off of SourceForge. Many of those "deceptive" download ads are actually served from Google AdX, but we are going to make it easy to report them when they arise so we can take quick action.
  - micro-ram 11y ago
    Just as a test I decided today (Feb 13, 2016) to download WinSCP. Fully surrounding the actual download link[1] are no less than 3 ads with the word "Download" prominently displayed. The project page[2] was even worse with 4 "Download" ads. This is still unacceptable. [1] http://imgur.com/XGkkPag http://imgur.com/XGkkPag [2] http://imgur.com/822v7CN http://imgur.com/822v7CN
jvoorhis 11y ago
That they call SourceForge "the site" says something. It was once a reputable, unique and really useful business, the only one of its kind doing pioneering work. Imagine Sergey Brin having lunch with an elder relative who asks, "How's the web site?" SF never came within an order of magnitude of Google's success obviously, but the language still betrays the attitude here.
- biot 11y ago
  Speaking of odd language, it's always struck me as quite old-fashioned when kids these days say things like "video isn't working on my Facebook". To me, it's equivalent to an old person saying "where did my internet go?" when the Internet Explorer icon is no longer visible on their desktop. I know it's effectively shorthand for "my Facebook account", but just saying "video isn't working on Facebook" conveys the same information since of course it's going to be their account they're using.
- rosser 11y ago
  I don't get this criticism. In pretty much every web-based shop I've ever worked, "the site" is unambiguously "our site", for the local value of "our". And on every website I can remember ever having seen that language, it was referring to the very site I was at that moment browsing. That's not attitude, it's linguistic convention.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  The site's gonna be alright
sidcool 11y ago
Trust lost is difficult to be gained back. But I will give them a benefit of doubt and watch.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  Thank you
aswanson 11y ago
Downloading anything from this site is akin to having unprotected sex with a prostitute. CNET is even worse. Strap up.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  Well we removed all bundled installers, hence this blog post.
  - tomstockmail 11y ago
    IMO it's pretty pathetic you respond to such an obvious troll post.
    - loganabbott 11y ago
      Thanks for your opinion and your response to my response to a troll. Just clarifying that we removed the DevShare program (unprotected sex to use his analogy)
      - chris_wot 11y ago
        Logan, please don't respond to trolls. It's one of the things that got slashdot into so much trouble!
    - cellularmitosis 11y ago
      Is it pathetic, or does it show that he is giving this an honest effort?
    - dang 11y ago
      He's trying his best to be gracious. You could do the same.
gethoht 11y ago
Sourceforge used to be a reputable source for software, mainly open source. I hope they actually do try to regain the community's trust by getting rid of the crap they were bundling.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  The crap is gone forever.
  - astrodust 11y ago
    Like the Flint Michigan fiasco with lead in the water, this is going to hang over SourceForge forever. You poisoned the well. On purpose. You'll never shake that.
    - loganabbott 11y ago
      We didn't poison the well. We purchased the well from the people who poisoned it and immediately detoxified it.
      - astrodust 11y ago
        It's more like you guys bought property that's an EPA Superfund site.
smegel 11y ago
Maybe they can implement a rocking issue tracker and steal some users back from Github
- loganabbott 11y ago
  Good idea
biot 11y ago
If you were made CEO of SourceForge, what would you do to make it relevant again? Assume shuttering the site isn't an option and you have to do your damnedest to make it work. What would it take? Beyond just pure, clean code and projects are there any services which sites like GitHub don't offer that might entice developers back, regardless of cost? The only things I can come up with are services like a free server farm for built-in continuous integration and deployment. Maybe strike deals with Heroku, AWS, Azure, Google, Digital Ocean, etc. to make one-click setup and deployments from the project a reality. If they can demonstrate trustworthiness (some sort of trusted third-party auditing?) and rapidly execute on delivering massive value, they just might be able to regain some of what they lost.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  Well, I'll assume shuttering the site isn't an option. Be careful also because apparently using the word "the" before the word "site" is taboo to some commenters here. We're going to do the obvious stuff first: get rid of bundled software (done), get rid of deceptive advertising, improve features (like rolling out https, done), and then we will look at ideas like you mentioned. I appreciate the feedback.
  - supersan 11y ago
    Yes, you would gain a massive chunk of traffic if you can get your site spam and malware free. There are still some projects like mp3gain, etc that are useful. Right now uBlock won't even let me visit Sourceforge without adding it to my exceptions list (probably for a good reason).
    - loganabbott 11y ago
      Yes the malware is gone. Now what's left is somewhat deceptive ads in some cases (ads with download button images in them). These are served programmatically from ad networks but we're building a system where they can be reported and acted on right away. Hopefully we'll get uBlock to come around.
mrmondo 11y ago
Interestingly - I was going to read it, but the site is blocked for known malware lol
- loganabbott 11y ago
  All the bundled installers are gone. Next order of business is to rid the site of all deceptive advertising. The old owners began it, but it was not transparent or easy for someone to report a deceptive ad. We will make sure soon that it is so we can begin removing all deceptive ads placed on SourceForge by advertisers buying traffic programatically.
  - mrmondo 11y ago
    I'll still never trust them, ever again. On top of the lack of trust - the site has been so poorly designed for so long now which is completely unacceptable for a site that makes a profit. Why would you use sourceforge over say something like Gitlab?
    - loganabbott 11y ago
      We're going to improve the design as well. It's only been 2 weeks since we acquired the site. Hope we'll earn your trust back in time.
      - mrmondo 11y ago
        Too little, too late I'm sorry. If you want to do something good why not start something good and then talk about how you wanted to create something modern, safe and based off the what you know when wrong with SF?
        loganabbott 11y ago
        Because we'd rather support the tens of thousands of projects and developers, and millions of users that rely on SourceForge. Clean it up, improve the feature set, and be transparent. But alright then.
gesman 11y ago
We fucked you well with DevShare program. Now we owned by a new pimp. Could you trust us now? Pretty please?
- loganabbott 11y ago
  Well we scrapped the DevShare program in the first week we owned it, and it's not coming back.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    I'm amazed that the original post was made by someone claiming to be a Senior Product Manager at Splunk!
prdonahue 11y ago
Wait, people still use SourceForge?
- loganabbott 11y ago
  About 35 million per month currently
tlrobinson 11y ago
SourceForge has been effectively strip mined. I'm curious to see if anything interesting comes of this.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  We hope so. Got a lot of good things planned
unimpressive 11y ago
You know, I'm a little disappointed with the HN commentariat. They at least ostensibly seem to be making a good faith effort to improve the site and people are responding with out and out venom. Yeah, I'm skeptical too but that's no reason to be so vicious.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  Thanks for the support.
  - interesting_att 11y ago
    Keep this up and you'll be the dev golden child in no time. Best of luck!
    - ohyeshedid 11y ago
      He's not a dev, strictly speaking, he's the new president of SourceForge Media. That actually raises my hopes, as the brass roughing it out in the comments and interacting is a rare thing these days.
  - chx 11y ago
    Logan, Sourceforge is still an incredible valuable source of software and information both. Making it a trusted site again would be great. Best of luck.
    - loganabbott 11y ago
      Thanks. I appreciate the kind words. I think we'll have the ship righted sooner than people think.
      - mrweasel 11y ago
        Best of luck to you. It would be nice to see some alternative to Github. As nice as Github is, it's pretty currently pretty much a mono-culture, and that's never a good thing.
unimpressive 11y ago
You don't need to reply to every comment though, it does come off as a bit desperate. :P
- loganabbott 11y ago
  Not replying to every comment. Just most of them. It's been a long week, but I like hearing feedback.
  - unimpressive 11y ago
    Your account seems newish, so I'm not sure how familiar you are with HN as a community. But we generally value signal to noise ratio pretty highly here, it's semi-bad form to repeat yourself in multiple comments, and it's very bad form to say things like 'thanks for your support'. That's more for reddit than it is HN.
    - loganabbott 11y ago
      I'm familiar with HN. It's just that this blog post was written by me, so I want to listen and respond to the feedback the community has to offer. Most of what got SourceForge in a bad situation in the first place were complaints falling on deaf ears of the previous owners. Improving SourceForge is very important to me.
    - dang 11y ago
      > it's very bad form to say things like 'thanks for your support' No, that's not correct. Empty comments can be ok if they're positive. There's nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just "Thanks." What we especially discourage are comments that are empty and negative—comments that are mere name-calling. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
      - unimpressive 11y ago
        Huh. I remembered incorrectly then. My apologies.
jeremy_wiebe 11y ago
What exactly was the reason for acquiring SourceForge? Was it that it came along with Slashdot? I don't have much interest in what happens to it, but there might be space for a well-run, well-designed source control/issue service. One thing that SF has is also email lists, doesn't it? Does Github have anything comparable? Or are lists even necessary anymore if you have a quality issue fracker?
- loganabbott 11y ago
  We saw a great opportunity in SourceForge: tens of thousands of projects and developers, and a very sizable user base. The problem was that they were being largely ignored by the previous owners. Done right, I think SourceForge can become extremely successful again. Same goes for Slashdot.
Caid11 11y ago
I'm looking forward to seeing how they plan to improve the site, especially now that they've committed to a concerted effort to clean up their ads and their practices.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  Glad to hear it. Stay tuned and you'll hopefully see some great stuff come to fruition
sbuttgereit 11y ago
I suspect the new management team of SourceForge and Slashdot will do their very best to right past ills and turn the tide. However, it's not a bet I'd be making. SourceForge is still home for some file distribution and, perhaps issue management, (thinking binaries) for a surprising number of projects... But for a lot of them actual development activities, the life blood of these projects, are mostly focused on github. In a sense, SourceForge is just a legacy to be dealt with. For SourceForge to come back in any meaningful way, they 1) have to do some serious modernizing and 2) github has to seriously screw up: probably rather moreso than the Dear GitHub issues. As for Slashdot, I came to HN because of the poor quality of moderation and the juvenile quality of the community on Slashdot nowadays. Perhaps it was always like that and I'm just older now... But it seems to not be the site I originally grew to love in the 90's. Last year I'd had enough and I don't see any need to go back now that I read HN.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  It was always like that. When it started many of us were much, much younger. I was 18! It was always a troll magnet, hell the GNAA started there. Unfortunately for Slashdot, most of us have grown up while it doesn't seem to have. I can't really see how you can change that culture, all I can think is you would have to do it very, very carefully and slowly. That said, slashdot is in a better state than SourceForge.
  - sbuttgereit 11y ago
    Yeah, you're right; I was in my mid-20's, but you're spot on. I think in the past the story moderation was better so there wasn't even so much draw to look at the comments. I got to looking at the comments as the interesting links went down. You're right about the difficulty in changing the formula. People I also agree that Slashdot is in much better shape than SourceForge. While it's distasteful, they do have readers still. If the new buyers got it for the right price it might make sense to salvage Slashdot and tear down SourceForge; but sounds like they're taking the decidedly more risky approach of trying to save both.
StephenAshmore 11y ago
An open-source machine learning toolkit(waffles) I regularly use in research was hosted on sourceforge for its entire lifespan, and was recently moved over to GitHub. The change in exposure for that toolkit has been extreme. I don't know how many people will be willing to switch back to sourceforge.
meddlepal 11y ago
Whooo boy. Good luck. Fixing up SF into something meaningful is going to be like taking over a dilapidated skyscraper and trying to turn it into luxury condo's. Actually sounds kinda fun.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  It's been.... interesting.. thus far. But definitely fun.
  - meddlepal 11y ago
    I'd be curious what kind of tech problems you need to solve. Shoot me an email: meddlepal@gmail.com .
joeld42 11y ago
I wonder how many of the HN readers don't remember how amazing sourceforge used to be. It was github before there was github. Easy, solid, project hosting for open source projects when that was often the main barrier to a good project getting more widely known. I think it's one of the earlier examples of why "grow userbase now, figure out how to monetize it later" can be a bad idea. There was a time when (perhaps) a majority of open source projects were hosted on sourceforge, and I think they assumed that that would just translate to profit (or sustainability) eventually. When that didn't happen, and then they had to compete with Google Code, it began the slide down the slippery slope to the spam-infested site that it is today. I hope that's changing. We need more options for hosting software projects, we can't rely on github being benevolent forever.
- bachback 11y ago
  yes. and what about the Github after Github? If open code runs everything its going to a pretty important public utility.
- kayamon 11y ago
  I don't remember sourceforge ever being amazing. From day one it was just CVS, with a terrible UI on top of it. The only thing ever good to say about it was that it was free.
  - Ixio 11y ago
    The UI wasn't great but how many reliable alternatives were there at the time? I've never used SF to host something but if so many big open source project used them in the past they had to be doing more things right than just being free (that last one turned to be tricky in the end).
    - kayamon 11y ago
      > The UI wasn't great but how many reliable alternatives were there at the time? None, that's why it did so well :)
    - 11y ago
SeanDav 11y ago
This seems like an excellent opportunity for SourceForge to become a better GitHub. GitHub, as good as it is, has quite a few weaknesses which they are in no hurry to address. SourceForge could change all that by going after GitHub's corporate business in order to monetize their business and improving every aspect of the free side of the business to match or exceed GitHub feature for feature. SourceForge have stumbled, badly, but if they play their cards right, this could become a very exciting time for open source.
jcoffland 11y ago
@loganabbott, How will you manage SF? It seems like a big job and if you already own hundreds of websites doesn't this spread you pretty thin? How much are you willing to spend on improving SF? Are you ultimately after ad revenue?
- loganabbott 11y ago
  I don't sleep. Willing to spend whatever we need to.
  - jcoffland 11y ago
    Do you literally not sleep at all, very little or are you just being facetious. I'm curious because I go through regular periods where I skip sleeping for a day or two.
gardano 11y ago
My morning routine back in the days where the classic asp/.NET v1 transition was happening: • Read a bunch of RSS feeds in NetNewsWire. • Catch up on recent activity at FreshMeat, and learn to understand the code. • Catch up on recent activity at SourceForge, and learn to understand the code (often by simply retyping it into Visual Studio by hand, partly for muscle-memory, partly as a way to think through the problem). • Maybe read more articles on how to use SVN. I learned a lot about how to code just with this routine. It would be great to know that aspiring coders would be able to do the same in this day and age. I wish you well, and hope that you become relevant again. SourceForge was a huge part of my learning experience as a budding developer.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  Thank you. We hope to become relevant in the minds of developers like you soon.
chrisvxd 11y ago
Almost all the comments here seem to be comparing SourceForge to GitHub, but (pre-DevShare) I always liked sourceforge as a consumer site, which is clearly not GitHub's area. Sure, there were some dev-orientated projects, but what made it great for me was the huge library of free, opensource and ACCESSIBLE consumer-facing software, like GIMP. Then again, this is HN.
- MaikuMori 11y ago
  Is it not? You can have GitHub pages for your project if you wish. Static website with no ads or malware added. Sure it's not like editing couple input boxes, but SF UX never was good. Even as developer I found navigating SF painful (back then when it was the primary hosting location). I can't imagine it was much better for the average user. I applaud the commitment, but I think SF should remain dead. It must be a lesion for anyone considering similar actions. The trust is non-existent, there are better alternatives and the world has moved on. I think the best course of action is to put that commitment and people into a new name, better product and help those few projects still hosted on SF to migrate.
  - loganabbott 11y ago
    SourceForge still receives 35 million visitors per month so it'd have to "die" to "remain dead". We're going to focus on ridding it of everything that hurt its reputation, and we're already on our way. We're also going to focus on supporting the tens of thousands of developers that rely on SourceForge. People can use archive.org if they want a "lesion" for anyone considering similar actions as the old SourceForge.
    - MaikuMori 11y ago
      I wanted to write it before, but skipped. 35 million page views is not usage. My guess is that you have considerably less sessions with more than 1 page view. I doubt there are more than 5k active projects (again, not the ones used by 1 person). There are a lot of links to SourceForge on the web. As someone in the thread pointed out there are even spammers abusing it. People clicking on the links and making "sessions" doesn't constitute actual usage. I doubt anyone in this thread uses SourceForge for hosting. I am not. And I wouldn't recommend it. If I asked my peers if they use it I'm certain that not a single person would say "Yes". So yes, in my eyes it's dead. ---- Oh I just opened the site and there are statistics on main page. 600 bug reports and 12k commits per week across all of the hosted projects is not really a big number. 10th most recently updated project was updated 1 month ago. Yes there are still some fairly large projects hosted (probably only for distribution) on SF and they receive considerable amount of downloads, but they're only there because they have been on SF for ages. Without fresh blood, those projects are just the last breath of SourceForge. Sincerely good luck. My point was that not only you have to fix the past, but also deliver better product. The market is quite saturated, people have choices, the end users are more tech savvy with higher standards, developers expect much more as well.
tyingq 11y ago
Aside from the malware, SourceForge was also pretty heavily overrun by spammers. Might want to have a look at that. For example: https://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Asourceforge.net%20payday%20loans https://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Asourceforge.net%20pa...
- loganabbott 11y ago
  You're right. If you click on some of those you'll see they are now 404'd. Google just has to de-index them. We've been removing tens of thousands of spam pages like this per day. Should have it all cleaned up in the next week or so.
kmfrk 11y ago
uBlock won't even allow me to visit that blog post, hard to see any future for SourceForge.
Theodores 11y ago
The MySpace of open source software. Maybe they need Justin Timberlake on board.
- DonHopkins 11y ago
  Just don't sell out to Rupert Murdoch, try to have an affair with his wife, or throw a pie in his face. She'll smack you! [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLVBUotX3MU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLVBUotX3MU
- Tideflat 11y ago
  Note that MySpace still exists.
lukego 11y ago
SourceForge nearly killed SLIME in the early days when they accidentally deleted our entire repository and didn't restore it. Fun times.
NicoJuicy 11y ago
Props for Logan Abbott, I don't think it's easy dealing with some comments over here. I wish people could see what it is. He's taking a risk trying to turn SF arround. He knows what it was and i'm curious how he is going to improve it over time. Good luck with that. It's going to be exciting times for open source ( gitlab, github, SF have had soms announcements the last days). I use github and gitlab for separate reasons right know and SF mostly for legacy apps. I think it would be interesting to see gitlab and SF working together, as they are both having some overlapping visions I suppose. PS. Hi Sytse, what are you using to watch the web for mentions of gitlab? :-)
- anon12345690 11y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11097873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11097873
Zelphyr 11y ago
As an early developer of SourceForge I'm glad to see these changes. GitHub is great, but it needs a real competitor and I've always felt SF could be that if done right.
- kbutler 11y ago
  Gitlab is that competitor - great free community edition, great feature set, great free offering. Sourceforge had a great legacy as the pioneer providing open source hosting, but has a badly tarnished legacy. It may or may not be able to rebuild that.
Tideflat 11y ago
Woot! I can stop feeling guilty about hosting my hobbist code on sourceforge out of laziness and not understanding git.
ed_blackburn 11y ago
If I were SF I'd hire some decent C devs and boss libgit2 so they can drop in their own backend that'll work with a decent UX experience. They'll need SVN too but surely that'd be more for in-situ repos. Integrate a decent CI/CD product with binaries and they've got somewhere to start...
anon12345690 11y ago
I'm surprised how many people haven't done any research on the acquirers. Logan Abbott and Roger Abbott (his father) are behind Wirefly and Bizx and lots of other shady companies with plenty of criminal history. > ...Mr. Abbott, has a track record of entrepreneurial flair and illegal hustle. He spent three years in prison after conviction on cocaine trafficking in 1983. After his release, he set up a telemarketing company that attracted regulatory scrutiny for its tactics in selling precious metals investments. In 1991, Mr. Abbott founded Communications Telesystems, which became known for slamming, the practice of switching customers from one long-distance service to another without their permission. After tens of thousands of complaints, the California Public Utilities Commission revoked the company's permission to operate most services in the state. 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/27/business/technology-a-suit-says-worldcom-deals-obscured-millions-in-bad-debt.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/27/business/technology-a-suit... 2. http://articles.latimes.com/1997-05-21/business/fi-60971_1_state-regulators http://articles.latimes.com/1997-05-21/business/fi-60971_1_s... 3. http://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/3d/162/635.html http://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/3d/16... 4. http://www.droid-life.com/2014/03/13/wirefly-abruptly-closes-up-shop-shady-penny-phone-deals-and-all/ http://www.droid-life.com/2014/03/13/wirefly-abruptly-closes... 5. https://www.bizx.info/about-bizx https://www.bizx.info/about-bizx (check the ceo) Needless to say, probably not a very high chance of sourceforge reclaiming it's reputation and more like slashdot losing whatever it has left.

279 points by tdurden 11y ago

Too little too late. While there are certainly plenty of rarely-updated packages still on SF, many of the good active ones have already left. They'll need significant investment in order to turn things around quickly enough and bring users back. Somewhat hard to believe the ROI will work out though...

shampine 11y ago
This exactly. The fact that uBlock Origin has anything from them in their block list is telling. They became the worst, there is no coming back from the that.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  We will get this resolved. DevShare elimination was just the first step. It's only been 2 weeks. Hopefully you'll see in time we are serious about regaining trust, and are wholly different than the previous owners.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    uBlock is the least of yor problems. There are the individual, commercial, and private blocks and hosts files which have been created and which have to be individually cleared. Possibly IP blocks as well. As with "inheriting" a former spammer's domains or IP space for email, that damage is long-lived. Securing a new or alternate donain would be a good investment. While there may be some tech and projects worth continuing, the brand is blighted property.
zanny 11y ago
Some stuff I've found that, for some reason, is still on sourceforge: * Pyqt * Supertuxkart * Quakespasm (Really popular Quake 1 engine) * Hammer of Thyrion (Only major Hexen 2 engine) And I'm sure there are more. The later two make some sense - they aren't major projects by any means, and are just hobby engine ports that probably would take a lot of work to bring to gitlab/hub. Pyqt is downright massive, it is the premire GUI toolkit for Python, and for some reason it is still on sourceforge. Supertuxkart is one of the pantheon of really good open source games, and recently got a massive update. And its still on Sourceforge... So there is still a lot to lose if Sourceforge went away. Plenty of projects desperately need to move but have not done so yet for various reasons.
- ward 11y ago
  NB: I used to help with STK development around 2011-2013, so have a likely biased view in this particular discussion. Actually, SuperTuxKart definitely moved some things away from Sourceforge already. You can find the Github account at https://github.com/supertuxkart https://github.com/supertuxkart. (Finished) assets and their "development" files (blender files, lossless audio, ...) are still on Sourceforge. I have not been actively involved with the project in a few years now, but as far as I am aware this is due to the simply enormous size that assets take up in a game. The finalised assets download is 650MB, the originals is 1.5GB (see http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Source_control http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Source_control). Due to the nature of svn this is only the current HEAD, you can imagine how big of a git repository this would end up becoming, where you by default download the entire repository. (EDIT: Github allows repositories of up to 1GB in size, see https://help.github.com/articles/what-is-my-disk-quota/ https://help.github.com/articles/what-is-my-disk-quota/) Furthermore, up until recently I believe Github severely limited the size of binaries you could upload. You understand this puts them at an impossibility. Also, Sourceforge provides mailing lists, Github does not. The wiki could be moved from Sourceforge to Github, but I do not know if that is a project they currently feel like undertaking. The current setup uses mediawiki and is easy enough for non-developers to update as well as having the same style as the landing page. If you switch to Github wiki, then the style breaks completely with the rest of the STK site. If you switch to a project page by means of the github pages, then you make things (I believe) significantly more difficult to update for the less technically oriented volunteers.
loganabbott 11y ago
We will invest what we have to to rebuild trust.
- ohyeshedid 11y ago
  Removal of DevShare, adding HTTPS, and removal of all the deceptive advertising is a step in the right direction. The next step is to reach out to all the blacklist providers you're listed on and get removed. You guys are shitlisted all over the place, and for good reasons that may no longer apply.
  - loganabbott 11y ago
    Yes you're absolutely right, and we will 100%.
- pbnjay 11y ago
  Sorry if my comment came off too harsh, I'm honestly very glad to hear it. You have a long uphill battle ahead and I sincerely hope you succeed. There's been too much consolidation onto github for me to be fully happy with my realistic choices.

DonHopkins 11y ago

Rosencrantz: Did you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it? Guildenstern: No. Rosencrantz: Nor do I, really. It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean, one thinks of it like being alive in a box. One keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead, which should make all the difference, shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never know you were in a box, would you? It would be just like you were asleep in a box. Not that I'd like to sleep in a box, mind you. Not without any air. You'd wake up dead for a start, and then where would you be? In a box. That's the bit I don't like, frankly. That's why I don't think of it. Because you'd be helpless, wouldn't you? Stuffed in a box like that. I mean, you'd be in there forever, even taking into account the fact that you're dead. It isn't a pleasant thought. Especially if you're dead, really. Ask yourself, if I asked you straight off, "I'm going to stuff you in this box. Now, would you rather be alive or dead?" naturally, you'd prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance, at least. You could lie there thinking, "Well, at least I'm not dead. In a minute somebody is going to bang on the lid, and tell me to come out." [bangs on lid] Rosencrantz: "Hey you! What's your name? Come out of there!" Guildenstern: [long pause] I think I'm going to kill you.

EvanPlaice 11y ago
Bravo
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
loganabbott 11y ago
Just had a high school english flashback.

rblatz 11y ago

Well, they seem like they get their target audience more than Dice did. If I were them I'd start trying to emulate and improve upon github. Seems like right now would be the time to strike.

justinclift 11y ago
Yeah. If they get involved with (say) the GitLab ecosystem, that could both reduce GitHub growth + attract more talent/projects to SourceForge. Both of which they'd be wanting to do.
- sytse 11y ago
  Anyone is welcome to use GitLab, it would be awesome to see SourceForge switch to it.
astrodust 11y ago
A partnership with a company like GitHub, Gitlab, anyone would help considerably.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  You're right and we will explore these
  - rblatz 11y ago
    I do think that right now github has multiple issues swirling around it, a lot of people and open source projects are looking for alternatives. Sourceforge used to be the place for open source software, the sooner you can offer a compelling alternative to github the more likely you are to win back a lot of dissatisfied github users.
    - astrodust 11y ago
      As much as GitHub has done to antagonize people by being non-responsive on some issues, it has never gone as far as SourceForge has historically. There's a decade of utter indifference there combined with malicious sabotage of popular projects several times over. Going from the frying pan to the fire is hardly the best plan, especially with offerings like Gitlab, Gitorious and Bitbucket readily available.

MegaDeKay 11y ago

At least they are making steps in the right direction... "Our first order of business was to terminate the “DevShare” program. As of last week, the DevShare program was completely eliminated. The DevShare program delivered installer bundles as part of the download for participating projects. We want to restore our reputation as a trusted home for open source software, and this was a clear first step towards that."

VonGuard 11y ago
Good fucking riddance.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  Agreed
loganabbott 11y ago
Thanks for the support. Yes we got rid of DevShare within a week of acquiring SourceForge. I think people will realize quickly we are serious about turning it around.
- gedy 11y ago
  You're getting a lot of snark here, but wanted to say that you coming here and addressing is really helpful in proving you're serious. I have fond memories of SF and keeping some completion in the market is always good.
  - loganabbott 11y ago
    Thanks. We are serious and I do appreciate all the feedback here. Agreed about the competition part as well.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      Fronting up and participating here counts for a lot. Thanks :-)

bsharitt 11y ago

While it's probably too little too late, it'd be near from a nostalgia perspective to have Sourceforge relevant again. Created in June 2001, my sf account is my oldest internet account I still have access too. They might have an opening against GitHub if the move fast and correctly.

inopinatus 11y ago
There is an opening, but the window will close fast and multiple competitors will try to fit through it at once. Their brand recognition is still high. That's about all they've got going. Something spectacular is required to shock this particular dead horse back into life. But I don't give much for their chances. That brand recognition is high for all the wrong reasons. The new president claims a background in digital marketing and content aggregation, not development or developer engagement.
- cpeterso 11y ago
  Does Sourceforge bring any unique assets besides its name, which is arguably a negative? There does seem to be a current in the air of anti-GitHub or post-GitHub discussions, but GitLab or Bitbucket seem better positioned than Sourceforge to grab that opportunity.
  - mook 11y ago
    sf.net does also do mailing list and shell account, and I _think_ possibly non-static web sites. None of them are for high-volume things, though, as far as I know.
  - ufmace 11y ago
    Their best asset is probably the pile of useful project still hosted there, even if many are more like legacy projects that haven't had any activity in years. The name is probably neutral at best. It has a lot of good memories from older open-source types who remember them putting up something that worked in the early days. But there's also a lot of bad memories from people who remember them mostly for serving malware and deceptive advertising.

kup0 11y ago

Might be too-little too-late, but anything that reduces adware/malware installation possibility is a good thing. It may not be enough to save SF, but at least it's going in a better direction now. Hopefully they will make other significant improvements too.

loganabbott 11y ago
Yes we plan to. Rolled out https a few days ago as well.

dredmorbius 11y ago

Go away, you're dead. On the other hand, having a tourism/travel business own Slashdot and Sourceforge is ... kind of an odd fit. Synergy, I suppose. https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/X9hrmBWqjMC https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/X9hr...

loganabbott 11y ago
We own hundreds of websites, a very small percentage of which are travel related. Most of them are technology related sites.
loganabbott 11y ago
Just read that full Google+ post. Wut?
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  I stand by my statements concerning Slashdot, DICE, and Sourceforge. I had no idea what BIZX LLC was, and the press release DICE provided (linked from my post) gave no information. The travel / tourism information came from BIZX's own website: https://www.bizx.info/ https://www.bizx.info/ https://www.bizx.info/about-bizx https://www.bizx.info/about-bizx As for the name, I call 'em as I see 'em. ".biz" as a TLD has negative equity so far as I'm aware, and BIZX is hardly an improvement on that. I'd suggest considering something more substantial sounding, specific, and trust inspiring.
  - loganabbott 11y ago
    I think the imagery you referenced in your post was a little non-sensical. But okay. Looks like you got quite a few likes and comments on that post so gold star for you.
    - dredmorbius 11y ago
      BIZX have an admittedly inhereted credibility gap to bridge with Slashdot and Sourceforge. That's going to require both openness and getting well out in front of the message. Why a principally tourism-oriented website management firm now has an interest in these two specific, storied, and as noted, tainted properties has some 'splainin' to do. The name doesn't much help. It's not awful, but it's definitely not great. There's little on the principles (I've found ... Rodger, is it? via LinkedIn and Bloomberg), and addressing why they're interested and what you're bringing to the table, and, since this is a business, are hoping to take from it, are valid questions for the community to be asking. Go back to see what the discussion was at the time Dice picked up Slashdot and Sourceforge: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6262347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6262347 From the even more technical Linux Weekly News: https://lwn.net/Articles/564250/ https://lwn.net/Articles/564250/ Or the (minimal) discussion from the announcement DHI were selling them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961783 Or Slashdot itself: http://m.slashdot.org/story/175039 http://m.slashdot.org/story/175039 Among the comments: "Who the hell is going to buy sourceforge at this point? It's not even worth the intellectual property behind the scenes. Maybe someone like cnet who wants another distribution channel for not-quite-malware." Again: I've had at least 17 years' association with Slashdot, and quite nearly as long with Sourceforge. I'm rather skeptical at this point that any private concern can manage them appropriately. It's an uphill battle. If your intentions are good, best luck to you. Don't think it'll be easy, and there are many who may well be hoping to see you stumble. I'm not one of them, but I'm highly dubious of success.

emmelaich 11y ago

I guess Google's blocking of sites that had deceptive download images may have been one of the catalysts for this.

loganabbott 11y ago
They did not block us, but all deceptive download buttons are coming off of SourceForge. Many of those "deceptive" download ads are actually served from Google AdX, but we are going to make it easy to report them when they arise so we can take quick action.
- micro-ram 11y ago
  Just as a test I decided today (Feb 13, 2016) to download WinSCP. Fully surrounding the actual download link[1] are no less than 3 ads with the word "Download" prominently displayed. The project page[2] was even worse with 4 "Download" ads. This is still unacceptable. [1] http://imgur.com/XGkkPag http://imgur.com/XGkkPag [2] http://imgur.com/822v7CN http://imgur.com/822v7CN

jvoorhis 11y ago

That they call SourceForge "the site" says something. It was once a reputable, unique and really useful business, the only one of its kind doing pioneering work. Imagine Sergey Brin having lunch with an elder relative who asks, "How's the web site?" SF never came within an order of magnitude of Google's success obviously, but the language still betrays the attitude here.

biot 11y ago
Speaking of odd language, it's always struck me as quite old-fashioned when kids these days say things like "video isn't working on my Facebook". To me, it's equivalent to an old person saying "where did my internet go?" when the Internet Explorer icon is no longer visible on their desktop. I know it's effectively shorthand for "my Facebook account", but just saying "video isn't working on Facebook" conveys the same information since of course it's going to be their account they're using.
rosser 11y ago
I don't get this criticism. In pretty much every web-based shop I've ever worked, "the site" is unambiguously "our site", for the local value of "our". And on every website I can remember ever having seen that language, it was referring to the very site I was at that moment browsing. That's not attitude, it's linguistic convention.
loganabbott 11y ago
The site's gonna be alright

sidcool 11y ago

Trust lost is difficult to be gained back. But I will give them a benefit of doubt and watch.

loganabbott 11y ago
Thank you

aswanson 11y ago

Downloading anything from this site is akin to having unprotected sex with a prostitute. CNET is even worse. Strap up.

loganabbott 11y ago
Well we removed all bundled installers, hence this blog post.
- tomstockmail 11y ago
  IMO it's pretty pathetic you respond to such an obvious troll post.
  - loganabbott 11y ago
    Thanks for your opinion and your response to my response to a troll. Just clarifying that we removed the DevShare program (unprotected sex to use his analogy)
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      Logan, please don't respond to trolls. It's one of the things that got slashdot into so much trouble!
  - cellularmitosis 11y ago
    Is it pathetic, or does it show that he is giving this an honest effort?
  - dang 11y ago
    He's trying his best to be gracious. You could do the same.

gethoht 11y ago

Sourceforge used to be a reputable source for software, mainly open source. I hope they actually do try to regain the community's trust by getting rid of the crap they were bundling.

loganabbott 11y ago
The crap is gone forever.
- astrodust 11y ago
  Like the Flint Michigan fiasco with lead in the water, this is going to hang over SourceForge forever. You poisoned the well. On purpose. You'll never shake that.
  - loganabbott 11y ago
    We didn't poison the well. We purchased the well from the people who poisoned it and immediately detoxified it.
    - astrodust 11y ago
      It's more like you guys bought property that's an EPA Superfund site.

smegel 11y ago

Maybe they can implement a rocking issue tracker and steal some users back from Github

loganabbott 11y ago
Good idea

biot 11y ago

If you were made CEO of SourceForge, what would you do to make it relevant again? Assume shuttering the site isn't an option and you have to do your damnedest to make it work. What would it take? Beyond just pure, clean code and projects are there any services which sites like GitHub don't offer that might entice developers back, regardless of cost? The only things I can come up with are services like a free server farm for built-in continuous integration and deployment. Maybe strike deals with Heroku, AWS, Azure, Google, Digital Ocean, etc. to make one-click setup and deployments from the project a reality. If they can demonstrate trustworthiness (some sort of trusted third-party auditing?) and rapidly execute on delivering massive value, they just might be able to regain some of what they lost.

loganabbott 11y ago
Well, I'll assume shuttering the site isn't an option. Be careful also because apparently using the word "the" before the word "site" is taboo to some commenters here. We're going to do the obvious stuff first: get rid of bundled software (done), get rid of deceptive advertising, improve features (like rolling out https, done), and then we will look at ideas like you mentioned. I appreciate the feedback.
- supersan 11y ago
  Yes, you would gain a massive chunk of traffic if you can get your site spam and malware free. There are still some projects like mp3gain, etc that are useful. Right now uBlock won't even let me visit Sourceforge without adding it to my exceptions list (probably for a good reason).
  - loganabbott 11y ago
    Yes the malware is gone. Now what's left is somewhat deceptive ads in some cases (ads with download button images in them). These are served programmatically from ad networks but we're building a system where they can be reported and acted on right away. Hopefully we'll get uBlock to come around.

mrmondo 11y ago

Interestingly - I was going to read it, but the site is blocked for known malware lol

loganabbott 11y ago
All the bundled installers are gone. Next order of business is to rid the site of all deceptive advertising. The old owners began it, but it was not transparent or easy for someone to report a deceptive ad. We will make sure soon that it is so we can begin removing all deceptive ads placed on SourceForge by advertisers buying traffic programatically.
- mrmondo 11y ago
  I'll still never trust them, ever again. On top of the lack of trust - the site has been so poorly designed for so long now which is completely unacceptable for a site that makes a profit. Why would you use sourceforge over say something like Gitlab?
  - loganabbott 11y ago
    We're going to improve the design as well. It's only been 2 weeks since we acquired the site. Hope we'll earn your trust back in time.
    - mrmondo 11y ago
      Too little, too late I'm sorry. If you want to do something good why not start something good and then talk about how you wanted to create something modern, safe and based off the what you know when wrong with SF?
      - loganabbott 11y ago
        Because we'd rather support the tens of thousands of projects and developers, and millions of users that rely on SourceForge. Clean it up, improve the feature set, and be transparent. But alright then.

gesman 11y ago

We fucked you well with DevShare program. Now we owned by a new pimp. Could you trust us now? Pretty please?

loganabbott 11y ago
Well we scrapped the DevShare program in the first week we owned it, and it's not coming back.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  I'm amazed that the original post was made by someone claiming to be a Senior Product Manager at Splunk!

prdonahue 11y ago

Wait, people still use SourceForge?

loganabbott 11y ago
About 35 million per month currently

tlrobinson 11y ago

SourceForge has been effectively strip mined. I'm curious to see if anything interesting comes of this.

loganabbott 11y ago
We hope so. Got a lot of good things planned

unimpressive 11y ago

You know, I'm a little disappointed with the HN commentariat. They at least ostensibly seem to be making a good faith effort to improve the site and people are responding with out and out venom. Yeah, I'm skeptical too but that's no reason to be so vicious.

loganabbott 11y ago
Thanks for the support.
- interesting_att 11y ago
  Keep this up and you'll be the dev golden child in no time. Best of luck!
  - ohyeshedid 11y ago
    He's not a dev, strictly speaking, he's the new president of SourceForge Media. That actually raises my hopes, as the brass roughing it out in the comments and interacting is a rare thing these days.
- chx 11y ago
  Logan, Sourceforge is still an incredible valuable source of software and information both. Making it a trusted site again would be great. Best of luck.
  - loganabbott 11y ago
    Thanks. I appreciate the kind words. I think we'll have the ship righted sooner than people think.
    - mrweasel 11y ago
      Best of luck to you. It would be nice to see some alternative to Github. As nice as Github is, it's pretty currently pretty much a mono-culture, and that's never a good thing.

unimpressive 11y ago

You don't need to reply to every comment though, it does come off as a bit desperate. :P

loganabbott 11y ago
Not replying to every comment. Just most of them. It's been a long week, but I like hearing feedback.
- unimpressive 11y ago
  Your account seems newish, so I'm not sure how familiar you are with HN as a community. But we generally value signal to noise ratio pretty highly here, it's semi-bad form to repeat yourself in multiple comments, and it's very bad form to say things like 'thanks for your support'. That's more for reddit than it is HN.
  - loganabbott 11y ago
    I'm familiar with HN. It's just that this blog post was written by me, so I want to listen and respond to the feedback the community has to offer. Most of what got SourceForge in a bad situation in the first place were complaints falling on deaf ears of the previous owners. Improving SourceForge is very important to me.
  - dang 11y ago
    > it's very bad form to say things like 'thanks for your support' No, that's not correct. Empty comments can be ok if they're positive. There's nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just "Thanks." What we especially discourage are comments that are empty and negative—comments that are mere name-calling. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
    - unimpressive 11y ago
      Huh. I remembered incorrectly then. My apologies.

jeremy_wiebe 11y ago

What exactly was the reason for acquiring SourceForge? Was it that it came along with Slashdot? I don't have much interest in what happens to it, but there might be space for a well-run, well-designed source control/issue service. One thing that SF has is also email lists, doesn't it? Does Github have anything comparable? Or are lists even necessary anymore if you have a quality issue fracker?

loganabbott 11y ago
We saw a great opportunity in SourceForge: tens of thousands of projects and developers, and a very sizable user base. The problem was that they were being largely ignored by the previous owners. Done right, I think SourceForge can become extremely successful again. Same goes for Slashdot.

Caid11 11y ago

I'm looking forward to seeing how they plan to improve the site, especially now that they've committed to a concerted effort to clean up their ads and their practices.

loganabbott 11y ago
Glad to hear it. Stay tuned and you'll hopefully see some great stuff come to fruition

sbuttgereit 11y ago

I suspect the new management team of SourceForge and Slashdot will do their very best to right past ills and turn the tide. However, it's not a bet I'd be making. SourceForge is still home for some file distribution and, perhaps issue management, (thinking binaries) for a surprising number of projects... But for a lot of them actual development activities, the life blood of these projects, are mostly focused on github. In a sense, SourceForge is just a legacy to be dealt with. For SourceForge to come back in any meaningful way, they 1) have to do some serious modernizing and 2) github has to seriously screw up: probably rather moreso than the Dear GitHub issues. As for Slashdot, I came to HN because of the poor quality of moderation and the juvenile quality of the community on Slashdot nowadays. Perhaps it was always like that and I'm just older now... But it seems to not be the site I originally grew to love in the 90's. Last year I'd had enough and I don't see any need to go back now that I read HN.

chris_wot 11y ago
It was always like that. When it started many of us were much, much younger. I was 18! It was always a troll magnet, hell the GNAA started there. Unfortunately for Slashdot, most of us have grown up while it doesn't seem to have. I can't really see how you can change that culture, all I can think is you would have to do it very, very carefully and slowly. That said, slashdot is in a better state than SourceForge.
- sbuttgereit 11y ago
  Yeah, you're right; I was in my mid-20's, but you're spot on. I think in the past the story moderation was better so there wasn't even so much draw to look at the comments. I got to looking at the comments as the interesting links went down. You're right about the difficulty in changing the formula. People I also agree that Slashdot is in much better shape than SourceForge. While it's distasteful, they do have readers still. If the new buyers got it for the right price it might make sense to salvage Slashdot and tear down SourceForge; but sounds like they're taking the decidedly more risky approach of trying to save both.

StephenAshmore 11y ago

An open-source machine learning toolkit(waffles) I regularly use in research was hosted on sourceforge for its entire lifespan, and was recently moved over to GitHub. The change in exposure for that toolkit has been extreme. I don't know how many people will be willing to switch back to sourceforge.

meddlepal 11y ago

Whooo boy. Good luck. Fixing up SF into something meaningful is going to be like taking over a dilapidated skyscraper and trying to turn it into luxury condo's. Actually sounds kinda fun.

loganabbott 11y ago
It's been.... interesting.. thus far. But definitely fun.
- meddlepal 11y ago
  I'd be curious what kind of tech problems you need to solve. Shoot me an email: meddlepal@gmail.com .

joeld42 11y ago

I wonder how many of the HN readers don't remember how amazing sourceforge used to be. It was github before there was github. Easy, solid, project hosting for open source projects when that was often the main barrier to a good project getting more widely known. I think it's one of the earlier examples of why "grow userbase now, figure out how to monetize it later" can be a bad idea. There was a time when (perhaps) a majority of open source projects were hosted on sourceforge, and I think they assumed that that would just translate to profit (or sustainability) eventually. When that didn't happen, and then they had to compete with Google Code, it began the slide down the slippery slope to the spam-infested site that it is today. I hope that's changing. We need more options for hosting software projects, we can't rely on github being benevolent forever.

bachback 11y ago
yes. and what about the Github after Github? If open code runs everything its going to a pretty important public utility.
kayamon 11y ago
I don't remember sourceforge ever being amazing. From day one it was just CVS, with a terrible UI on top of it. The only thing ever good to say about it was that it was free.
- Ixio 11y ago
  The UI wasn't great but how many reliable alternatives were there at the time? I've never used SF to host something but if so many big open source project used them in the past they had to be doing more things right than just being free (that last one turned to be tricky in the end).
  - kayamon 11y ago
    > The UI wasn't great but how many reliable alternatives were there at the time? None, that's why it did so well :)
  - 11y ago

SeanDav 11y ago

This seems like an excellent opportunity for SourceForge to become a better GitHub. GitHub, as good as it is, has quite a few weaknesses which they are in no hurry to address. SourceForge could change all that by going after GitHub's corporate business in order to monetize their business and improving every aspect of the free side of the business to match or exceed GitHub feature for feature. SourceForge have stumbled, badly, but if they play their cards right, this could become a very exciting time for open source.

jcoffland 11y ago

@loganabbott, How will you manage SF? It seems like a big job and if you already own hundreds of websites doesn't this spread you pretty thin? How much are you willing to spend on improving SF? Are you ultimately after ad revenue?

loganabbott 11y ago
I don't sleep. Willing to spend whatever we need to.
- jcoffland 11y ago
  Do you literally not sleep at all, very little or are you just being facetious. I'm curious because I go through regular periods where I skip sleeping for a day or two.

gardano 11y ago

My morning routine back in the days where the classic asp/.NET v1 transition was happening: • Read a bunch of RSS feeds in NetNewsWire. • Catch up on recent activity at FreshMeat, and learn to understand the code. • Catch up on recent activity at SourceForge, and learn to understand the code (often by simply retyping it into Visual Studio by hand, partly for muscle-memory, partly as a way to think through the problem). • Maybe read more articles on how to use SVN. I learned a lot about how to code just with this routine. It would be great to know that aspiring coders would be able to do the same in this day and age. I wish you well, and hope that you become relevant again. SourceForge was a huge part of my learning experience as a budding developer.

loganabbott 11y ago
Thank you. We hope to become relevant in the minds of developers like you soon.

chrisvxd 11y ago

Almost all the comments here seem to be comparing SourceForge to GitHub, but (pre-DevShare) I always liked sourceforge as a consumer site, which is clearly not GitHub's area. Sure, there were some dev-orientated projects, but what made it great for me was the huge library of free, opensource and ACCESSIBLE consumer-facing software, like GIMP. Then again, this is HN.

MaikuMori 11y ago
Is it not? You can have GitHub pages for your project if you wish. Static website with no ads or malware added. Sure it's not like editing couple input boxes, but SF UX never was good. Even as developer I found navigating SF painful (back then when it was the primary hosting location). I can't imagine it was much better for the average user. I applaud the commitment, but I think SF should remain dead. It must be a lesion for anyone considering similar actions. The trust is non-existent, there are better alternatives and the world has moved on. I think the best course of action is to put that commitment and people into a new name, better product and help those few projects still hosted on SF to migrate.
- loganabbott 11y ago
  SourceForge still receives 35 million visitors per month so it'd have to "die" to "remain dead". We're going to focus on ridding it of everything that hurt its reputation, and we're already on our way. We're also going to focus on supporting the tens of thousands of developers that rely on SourceForge. People can use archive.org if they want a "lesion" for anyone considering similar actions as the old SourceForge.
  - MaikuMori 11y ago
    I wanted to write it before, but skipped. 35 million page views is not usage. My guess is that you have considerably less sessions with more than 1 page view. I doubt there are more than 5k active projects (again, not the ones used by 1 person). There are a lot of links to SourceForge on the web. As someone in the thread pointed out there are even spammers abusing it. People clicking on the links and making "sessions" doesn't constitute actual usage. I doubt anyone in this thread uses SourceForge for hosting. I am not. And I wouldn't recommend it. If I asked my peers if they use it I'm certain that not a single person would say "Yes". So yes, in my eyes it's dead. ---- Oh I just opened the site and there are statistics on main page. 600 bug reports and 12k commits per week across all of the hosted projects is not really a big number. 10th most recently updated project was updated 1 month ago. Yes there are still some fairly large projects hosted (probably only for distribution) on SF and they receive considerable amount of downloads, but they're only there because they have been on SF for ages. Without fresh blood, those projects are just the last breath of SourceForge. Sincerely good luck. My point was that not only you have to fix the past, but also deliver better product. The market is quite saturated, people have choices, the end users are more tech savvy with higher standards, developers expect much more as well.

tyingq 11y ago

Aside from the malware, SourceForge was also pretty heavily overrun by spammers. Might want to have a look at that. For example: https://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Asourceforge.net%20payday%20loans https://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Asourceforge.net%20pa...

loganabbott 11y ago
You're right. If you click on some of those you'll see they are now 404'd. Google just has to de-index them. We've been removing tens of thousands of spam pages like this per day. Should have it all cleaned up in the next week or so.

kmfrk 11y ago

uBlock won't even allow me to visit that blog post, hard to see any future for SourceForge.

Theodores 11y ago

The MySpace of open source software. Maybe they need Justin Timberlake on board.

DonHopkins 11y ago
Just don't sell out to Rupert Murdoch, try to have an affair with his wife, or throw a pie in his face. She'll smack you! [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLVBUotX3MU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLVBUotX3MU
Tideflat 11y ago
Note that MySpace still exists.

lukego 11y ago

SourceForge nearly killed SLIME in the early days when they accidentally deleted our entire repository and didn't restore it. Fun times.

NicoJuicy 11y ago

Props for Logan Abbott, I don't think it's easy dealing with some comments over here. I wish people could see what it is. He's taking a risk trying to turn SF arround. He knows what it was and i'm curious how he is going to improve it over time. Good luck with that. It's going to be exciting times for open source ( gitlab, github, SF have had soms announcements the last days). I use github and gitlab for separate reasons right know and SF mostly for legacy apps. I think it would be interesting to see gitlab and SF working together, as they are both having some overlapping visions I suppose. PS. Hi Sytse, what are you using to watch the web for mentions of gitlab? :-)

anon12345690 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11097873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11097873

Zelphyr 11y ago

As an early developer of SourceForge I'm glad to see these changes. GitHub is great, but it needs a real competitor and I've always felt SF could be that if done right.

kbutler 11y ago
Gitlab is that competitor - great free community edition, great feature set, great free offering. Sourceforge had a great legacy as the pioneer providing open source hosting, but has a badly tarnished legacy. It may or may not be able to rebuild that.

Tideflat 11y ago

Woot! I can stop feeling guilty about hosting my hobbist code on sourceforge out of laziness and not understanding git.

ed_blackburn 11y ago

If I were SF I'd hire some decent C devs and boss libgit2 so they can drop in their own backend that'll work with a decent UX experience. They'll need SVN too but surely that'd be more for in-situ repos. Integrate a decent CI/CD product with binaries and they've got somewhere to start...

anon12345690 11y ago

I'm surprised how many people haven't done any research on the acquirers. Logan Abbott and Roger Abbott (his father) are behind Wirefly and Bizx and lots of other shady companies with plenty of criminal history. > ...Mr. Abbott, has a track record of entrepreneurial flair and illegal hustle. He spent three years in prison after conviction on cocaine trafficking in 1983. After his release, he set up a telemarketing company that attracted regulatory scrutiny for its tactics in selling precious metals investments. In 1991, Mr. Abbott founded Communications Telesystems, which became known for slamming, the practice of switching customers from one long-distance service to another without their permission. After tens of thousands of complaints, the California Public Utilities Commission revoked the company's permission to operate most services in the state. 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/27/business/technology-a-suit-says-worldcom-deals-obscured-millions-in-bad-debt.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/27/business/technology-a-suit... 2. http://articles.latimes.com/1997-05-21/business/fi-60971_1_state-regulators http://articles.latimes.com/1997-05-21/business/fi-60971_1_s... 3. http://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/3d/162/635.html http://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/3d/16... 4. http://www.droid-life.com/2014/03/13/wirefly-abruptly-closes-up-shop-shady-penny-phone-deals-and-all/ http://www.droid-life.com/2014/03/13/wirefly-abruptly-closes... 5. https://www.bizx.info/about-bizx https://www.bizx.info/about-bizx (check the ceo) Needless to say, probably not a very high chance of sourceforge reclaiming it's reputation and more like slashdot losing whatever it has left.