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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

by 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 :)
scrollaway 11y ago
> The UI wasn't great but how many reliable alternatives were there at the time? None. But when Github came around, there were also no reliable alternatives at the time (other than google code which sucked as well) and it was still a thousand times better than everything else. Sourceforge was never "amazing". It was never "great". It used to be decent and the only player in the game. When Github came around, it quickly lost both those attributes. I don't know why people fondly remember the "old sourceforge days" - I remember those days and they sucked. Don't let the lack of competition forgive how bad something is.
- tmd83 11y ago
  I wasn't a coder in the Sourceforge glory days. But it was a great place for a frequent user of opensource software. I remember a lot of small projects only existence was their Sourceforge presence. So Github might have provided a lot of new things but Sourceforge was really amazing at what it provided, when it provided. Being the only player also means nobody gave small opensource projects any home when they did.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    It wasn't really the only player; BerliOS and GNU Savannah appeared right around that time, and Launchpad isn't much younger. That said, they weren't really any better, in my opinion. At least SF had a bunch of mirrors, which was helpful back then.
    - ksherlock 11y ago
      SourceForge started out as a 20% time type project at VA Linux/Research. It was originally open source but went closed source when they pivoted from hardware to SourceForge. Savannah was a fork from before it was closed up.
deleted 11y ago
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by Ixio 11y ago

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 :)

scrollaway 11y ago

> The UI wasn't great but how many reliable alternatives were there at the time? None. But when Github came around, there were also no reliable alternatives at the time (other than google code which sucked as well) and it was still a thousand times better than everything else. Sourceforge was never "amazing". It was never "great". It used to be decent and the only player in the game. When Github came around, it quickly lost both those attributes. I don't know why people fondly remember the "old sourceforge days" - I remember those days and they sucked. Don't let the lack of competition forgive how bad something is.

tmd83 11y ago
I wasn't a coder in the Sourceforge glory days. But it was a great place for a frequent user of opensource software. I remember a lot of small projects only existence was their Sourceforge presence. So Github might have provided a lot of new things but Sourceforge was really amazing at what it provided, when it provided. Being the only player also means nobody gave small opensource projects any home when they did.
- icebraining 11y ago
  It wasn't really the only player; BerliOS and GNU Savannah appeared right around that time, and Launchpad isn't much younger. That said, they weren't really any better, in my opinion. At least SF had a bunch of mirrors, which was helpful back then.
  - ksherlock 11y ago
    SourceForge started out as a 20% time type project at VA Linux/Research. It was originally open source but went closed source when they pivoted from hardware to SourceForge. Savannah was a fork from before it was closed up.

deleted 11y ago

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