14 ms·

Introducing the new SourceForge

207 points by animeseinfeld 9y ago

minxomat 9y ago
Nice work, I really didn't expect anything despite Logan promising improvements time and time again via twitter. Excited for the GitHub sync (not import). Also, the awesome SF hosting (SSL and a SQL DB included), much better than GH Pages IMO.
- fhood 9y ago
  I'm glad you say that, because I have always viewed sourceforge as slightly sketchy, but without any real justification. I just knew that I was supposed to have mixed feelings about it.
  - loganabbott 9y ago
    Glad to hear it too!
kyriakos 9y ago
Good job. Github sync means you can host binaries on sourceforge and keep the source on github as usual?
- loganabbott 9y ago
  Yes that is correct. It syncs (copies) binaries from GH to SF, doesn't touch code.
  - mrtweetyhack 9y ago
    So you're stealing binaries from GH and calling it your own? Sort of like what every download site already does. "Every day, SourceForge sees over a million visitors and serves 4.5 million software downloads." So everyday a user on average downloads 4.5 software packages? I highly doubt your numbers. Personally, I've downloaded perhaps 5 within the last year and I am an rabid consumer of OSS. I am not impressed with your performance.
    - caf 9y ago
      The binaries in question aren't GH's or SF's, they're the project's, and since this synching is under the project's control, I don't see the problem.
- kbumsik 9y ago
  Out of curiosity, what is the benefit of hosting binaries on SF over GH releases?
  - loganabbott 9y ago
    We get over a million users per day looking to download OSS. If you have binaries on SF you can reach these people through our very robust discovery tools and strength of our search results in Google. We also give project admins detailed download statistics.
    - NCommander 9y ago
      Are there any plans to push this code back upstream to Apache? My understanding is SF.net abandoned the legacy alexandria (the PHP code from VA Linux) source code, built the current version, and then sent to the Apache Foundation, but I'm not clear if this is a fork, or what sf.net's relation is with it's upstream. Also, since I'm on the topic, any chance slashdot will go back to an open source code model?
    - john_moscow 9y ago
      I'm sorry to be the party pooper here, but it looks like the relevance war to Github was lost ~7 years ago: https://trends.google.ca/trends/explore?date=all&q=github,sourceforge https://trends.google.ca/trends/explore?date=all&q=github,so...
      - loganabbott 9y ago
        GitHub is much larger by traffic, but that doesn't mean we are going to abandon the million users we get every day and the 430,000 projects hosted at SourceForge. It's not a zero sum game. Some people like using GitHub's suite of tools, while also taking advantage of SourceForge mailing lists, project website hosting, detailed download statistics, and distribution/discovery capability. Our GitHub Sync Tool lets project owners use both with ease.
        9y ago
mgbmtl 9y ago
If anyone from Gitlab is listening: github sync is a really important feature for FOSS projects. Glad that SourceForge implemented it. (In a large-ish FOSS project, we are trying to move to self-hosted Gitlab, but the lack of sync means that people have to fully buy-in or manually sync their extensions/modules, which is causing major friction)
- krisives 9y ago
  Is Sync specific to Visual Studio?
  - insomniacity 9y ago
    Visual Studio uses Sync to refer to git push and pull, as far as I can tell. (I avoid it and use the command line). In this context I think they're referring to tools to automatically sync your git/wiki/releases etc from Github to other platforms like Gitlab.
    - sli 9y ago
      Repos can be mirrored by just adding another origin, can't they? The others, though, yeah. Those are handy.
      - derimagia 9y ago
        Not exactly - you can then push all branches and they will be the same but then if the source repo changes you need to manually push for you. True sync would do this for you, along with ideally issues/wiki/etc.
        lucideer 9y ago
        > if the source repo changes you need to manually push Gitlab definitely does this automatically for you if you mirror the repository. Or am I misunderstanding how this feature works?
MikkoFinell 9y ago
Wasn't it sourceforge that injected malware into downloaded programs? At least that's what pops into my head every time I see a sourceforge link, and why I avoid anything that's hosted on there.
- loganabbott 9y ago
  It was, but we ended that practice immediately after acquiring SourceForge in 2016. More info in the OP or in an AMA I did here: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_of_sourceforge_since_its_acquisition_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_...
  - Moru 9y ago
    But it will be hard to rebuild the trust once ruined.
    - coverband 9y ago
      Sure, but it starts with goodwill...
      - behringer 9y ago
        Goodwill only goes so far. When a restaurant is infested with roaches, you can't just hand food out to people and expect anyone to think the restaurant cleaned up and fumigated. You have to like, tell people that.
  - smacktoward 9y ago
    That's very good to hear! I'm honestly not sure if you wouldn't be better off changing the name of the service to something else at this point. People who just want to download binaries won't care what the name is, and developers who want to use the full spectrum of services will have enough bad associations with the name "SourceForge" at this point that keeping it could end up driving away more users than it attracts. And all the time and energy it'll take to rehabilitate the SourceForge brand could just as easily go towards building up some new brand instead, without all the baggage the old name carries. (It's possible I'm overestimating how long peoples' memories are here, of course. But when I hear "SourceForge" I still think of all the bad stuff they did in the past, so presumably there are at least a few others out there like me as well.)
hanley 9y ago
Looks like a good list of features, except for the HTML5 Speedtest. Why was that needed?
- loganabbott 9y ago
  We had built it for another internal project before we acquired SourceForge, so we decided to release it on SourceForge since people seemed to like it.
- da_chicken 9y ago
  Because it's a multi-site file host, and knowing your connection speed to your file host sites can help determine which site to prefer.
minxomat 9y ago
Any plans on expanding: - the ticket system (connectors to external systems, boards, etc.) - CI connectors - integrations for team systems (Slack, MS Teams, ...)
- loganabbott 9y ago
  Yes definitely. Second half of 2018.
aphextron 9y ago
Brought to you by Google AdSense What exactly is "new" besides the brutally awful design and color scheming? I see the same malware laden downloads that can be found anywhere else on the internet, surrounded by ads as was there before. Over 600 separate HTTP requests and counting on a project page? Really? You seriously expect developers to use this?
- dbg31415 9y ago
  Yeah, I halfway expected Wappalyzer to say, "Built with PHP-Nuke." But maybe they stopped injecting ads into open-source downloads at least? Can't imagine why anyone would trust them again.
  - loganabbott 9y ago
    Yeah we ended that practice as soon as we acquired SourceForge over a year ago, and we have nothing to do with the company that made those decisions in the first place. It's in the blog post. As for ads/design- we know we can't please everyone and still keep the lights on. If you login you won't see any ads.
    - signal11 9y ago
      I wish you every success and am not going to hold pre-acquisition decisions against you. The last thing FL/OSS code hosting needs is a monoculture. However, if you could publicize -- anywhere -- how you plan to monetize, that would be very useful in building back user trust (just my 2c). Also, re design - it would be very useful to have something comparable to Github/Bitbucket (and Gitlab I guess), all of which are in a similar space. Perhaps one for the roadmap? Thanks again!
      - loganabbott 9y ago
        Right now we monetize via display ads, but any logged in user or project admin will not see any ads. We are looking at ways to cut down on the amount of display ads going forward, and have already begun doing that as we get more direct partnerships.
krisives 9y ago
Glad to see they are removing their adware from packages. I believe the damage is already done though and nobody will trust a binary from that place ever again.
- loganabbott 9y ago
  Just focused on doing right by the 1 million daily users that come to SourceForge to download one of 430,000 projects hosted there.
fuball63 9y ago
I've been on SourceForge a while, and I really like it. It always looked a little outdated, and there was the whole malware incident, but for hosting code with discussion boards and ticket systems, it does the job nicely. Obviously the malware thing was really bad, but in general I think it gets a bad rap because it wasn't the trendy new thing. I personally liked the old UI, but I'm happy for the new change because it's good for the future of the platform.
- mkroman 9y ago
  May I ask why you don't use any of the alternatives? GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, etc.?
  - fuball63 9y ago
    I use sourceforge for games, github for other projects, and bitbucket for work. It just happened that I had sourceforge first. For the features I use, they're all pretty much the same... The only "advanced" feature I use is Travis CI integration on github. Edit: now that I think of it, ive used a githook in bitbucket too.
jasonmaydie 9y ago
I hope they got rid of the guy who suggested bundling installers
- loganabbott 9y ago
  They're no longer at SourceForge.
shadowtree 9y ago
Sad state of affairs that something like ScourceForge cannot operate as a paid-for service, but only as a "tech-influencer" ad site. quote from here: https://slashdotmedia.com/about-slashdot-media/ https://slashdotmedia.com/about-slashdot-media/ Not attacking the Abbotts and their SlashDotMedia and BizX web media influencer conglomerate, 100% legitimate way of doing business, but an overall observation on services that can't be operated as standalone businesses. Also an illustration how big the tech dependency on advertising is, from Google to this. Remove ads from the web and a shitload of stuff disappears.
- loganabbott 9y ago
  It's something we're trying to come up with solutions for, so that we can reduce or eliminate ads on SourceForge. But for now, any user or developer who creates an account on SourceForge will never see ads.
- aldanor 9y ago
  ScourgeForge?
- user5994461 9y ago
  That's not true. GitHub is a paid for service that is profitable and provides the same as sourceforge.
sigzero 9y ago
Kudos! Keep improving. The source hosting "business" isn't a zero sum game. Everyone benefits from choice and competition.
nik736 9y ago
They should hire a new lead designer.
jhallenworld 9y ago
I notice that there is no automatic spell checking in edit boxes, for example when someone creates a bug ticket. Github has this. Any plans to add this feature? Or is there a control to enable it that I'm missing?
- hk__2 9y ago
  Isn’t that handled by your browser rather than GitHub?
  - jhallenworld 9y ago
    Apparently it's a bug with the markdown editor they are using: https://forge-allura.apache.org/p/allura/tickets/7954/ https://forge-allura.apache.org/p/allura/tickets/7954/
alkonaut 9y ago
I applaud the initiative but when I look at what happened to Slashdot, I’m not enthusiastic about Sourceforge succeeding any better under the same ownership (I have no idea whether Slashdot makes money but it’s a horrible community these days, and nothing seems to be done about it.)
- PacoFromBrazil 9y ago
  I share the same feelings. I used Slashdot for many years, starting when Rob Malda ran the site. The past year or so has been the worst, in my opinion, even when considering the Beta era of discontent. The stories used to be primarily about tech (or related subjects), with a minor focus on politics. But lately I think it has been the opposite. There is much more emphasis on general politics, with tech being a minor focus, in my opinion. While I'm not very interested in politics to begin with, what bothers me the most is how partisan I think things have gotten. The stories have what I consider a rather left-wing bias. The same goes for the modding, where I think it's common to see centrist and right-wing comments often downmodded, even when they express a very reasonable and relevant set of ideas. I feel that Slashdot has moved from perhaps being an open, varied, quasi-libertarian environment to one that's much less open, much less diverse, and much less enjoyable. So I stopped visiting it about a month ago, and I don't miss it at all.
  - strictnein 9y ago
    > The stories used to be primarily about tech (or related subjects), with a minor focus on politics. But lately I think it has been the opposite. There is much more emphasis on general politics, with tech being a minor focus, in my opinion. I left for basically the same reason, but quite a while ago. I forget which of the editors it was, but he would interject politics into everything. And even after people asked for a politics section (which could then be turned off), to keep politics out of the tech stuff, he would still put political stuff all over the place.
usernam 9y ago
Whoa there: fixed top banner with an actual banner at the top, covering a whopping 20% of my screen height and 80% of width. Didn't see something like this in a long time. I'm never going to interact through that as a developer on daily basis. Not even considering the poor UI for just every feature in SF. The only thing SF has for it, currently, is a mailing list for each project. GitHub and GitLab should have this. Interaction and discussion though "issues" is horrible.
- loganabbott 9y ago
  If you're logged in you don't see any ads.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- benstrumental 9y ago
  > GitHub and GitLab should have this. Interaction and discussion though "issues" is horrible. Agreed. It would be a huge win for GitHub or GitLab to provide this service. There really are no great alternatives beyond hosting a mailman server yourself.
  - matt_the_bass 9y ago
    What about something like MailChimp?
  - vonnieda 9y ago
    Google Groups works well for this. I use it for my open source projects. You can interact with it via the web, if you want, but it also has a full mailman style interface, which is how I use it.
- connorshea 9y ago
  We have an issue for mailing lists in GitLab here[0] if you want to leave any comments, but it's not a particularly active issue and I'm not sure how likely we'd be to actually build this into the product. I'll update this comment if I find a more active/fleshed-out issue for the same functionality. [0]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4272 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4272
timschroedernet 9y ago
A company whose website doesn't have a jobs section is doomed.
mrtweetyhack 9y ago
A case of too little and WAY too late. Sourceforge is like the Myspace, long dead. It's not even a good try.
choward 9y ago
Atrocious. They lock a pointless navigation bar to the top and changed the theme. Can someone explain why I would ever want to use this product. They bundled adware with their software ffs. Inexcusable. They need to just die.
- Osiris 9y ago
  In the announcement: "Removed bundled adware from projects". At least it's a step forward.
  - choward 9y ago
    The fact that they were okay with doing that to begin with is what concerns me.
yellowpug 9y ago
surprised SourceForge is still alive
bla2 9y ago
I for one am excited about this. I used to have stuff on sourceforge, and to me it feels like they're on track to become relevant again.
partycoder 9y ago
SourceForge uses very invasive ads.
anowlcalledjosh 9y ago
Has nobody in the design team ever tested this on a screen at less than 4K? At 1366×768 the title is jammed right up against the left edge of the screen.
Paperweight 9y ago
position: sticky; /* Frames are back, baby! */
gitgud 9y ago
The UI menu really annoys me, the top level reads the following: |Browse|Blog|Deals|Help|Create|Join|Login| Deals? Separate Join and Login? ... Confusing Then when you scroll down, the top menu changes to: | Articles | Internet Speed Test | Menu | | | | BIG AD BANNER | | | Articles? This is a hosting site, and they have a Blog item already! INTERNET SPEED TEST??! I appreciated Sourceforge and it was a big part of my gateway experience into opensource, but now it just looks like an amateur startup :(
boyter 9y ago
Nice. A large improvement. Have been waiting for this for a while since it was announced that it was sold. No idea if anyone working on sourceforge is likely to be here or not but I would love to know if I could get an API of the projects there or even just a list. I would like to add more of souceforge into searchcode.com and would prefer to not scrape the site.
iwanttodie 9y ago
To loganabbott-- The new design looks pretty good, or at least more modern. Also I just wanted to emphasize with you that you had to field the same "do you still bundle malware" question...eight times by my count.
- loganabbott 9y ago
  Thanks. I am aware.
carussell 9y ago
Logan, I just went through the process to create an account. The signup page has a few employment related fields that are required to create an account. They probably shouldn't be. EDIT: There's also this[1] alignment issue in the settings wrt to "City of residence" where the text field is off by ~1 pixel. EDIT2: On the page where I uploaded my SSH key[2], it says updates occur after a small delay. The linked page in the docs says that this delay is ~30 minutes. In any case, I was able to begin using SSH immediately. If that info is no longer fresh, I suggest removing it, especially since it's probably a turnoff for a lot of users. EDIT3: When I run sf-help --web at the shell, it prints an error: [colbyrussell@shell-22009 ~]$ sf-help --web Use of uninitialized value $user in concatenation (.) or string at /usr/bin/sf-help line 96 1. https://imgur.com/a/2d0lr https://imgur.com/a/2d0lr 2. https://sourceforge.net/auth/shell_services https://sourceforge.net/auth/shell_services
- loganabbott 9y ago
  Great thanks for the feedback. Looking into it.
ianamartin 9y ago
Well, at least it's not as mind-punchingly slow as it used to be. Progress?
wodenokoto 9y ago
I got into SVC / code repositories after the whole sourceforge serves malware debacle, so I'm not familiar with SF from a developer perspective. Is it a got repo? Mercurial? Something else completely?
mmsimanga 9y ago
Anecdotal. I find Sourceforge has more end-user applications. By this I mean applications you can download, install and have a user interface. A good example is Squirrel SQL[1]. Github seems to be a coders repository. Filled with libraries to incorporate into other programs. [1]https://sourceforge.net/projects/squirrel-sql/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/squirrel-sql/
scruffyherder 9y ago
Probably far too late to mention, but I have a bunch of projects on SF, and now I can't scroll through them on the me drop down menu. It feels.. strange, and more responsive than the old stuff. I guess that's just change. I never was a fan of github, I always preferred the geodistribution of SF, and of course it was so easy to make binary packages for end users. It's a shame the other people had to ruin a great place with selling the adware space, and Im so glad it's all gone. I just fear in this environment of hipster flash with no substance, that a well rounded site like SF will never get the hipster VC financing that github does. I hope you guys don't shutter any time soon, I love SF!
Zhrani 9y ago
hello world!

207 points by animeseinfeld 9y ago

Nice work, I really didn't expect anything despite Logan promising improvements time and time again via twitter. Excited for the GitHub sync (not import). Also, the awesome SF hosting (SSL and a SQL DB included), much better than GH Pages IMO.

fhood 9y ago
I'm glad you say that, because I have always viewed sourceforge as slightly sketchy, but without any real justification. I just knew that I was supposed to have mixed feelings about it.
- loganabbott 9y ago
  Glad to hear it too!

kyriakos 9y ago

Good job. Github sync means you can host binaries on sourceforge and keep the source on github as usual?

loganabbott 9y ago
Yes that is correct. It syncs (copies) binaries from GH to SF, doesn't touch code.
- mrtweetyhack 9y ago
  So you're stealing binaries from GH and calling it your own? Sort of like what every download site already does. "Every day, SourceForge sees over a million visitors and serves 4.5 million software downloads." So everyday a user on average downloads 4.5 software packages? I highly doubt your numbers. Personally, I've downloaded perhaps 5 within the last year and I am an rabid consumer of OSS. I am not impressed with your performance.
  - caf 9y ago
    The binaries in question aren't GH's or SF's, they're the project's, and since this synching is under the project's control, I don't see the problem.
kbumsik 9y ago
Out of curiosity, what is the benefit of hosting binaries on SF over GH releases?
- loganabbott 9y ago
  We get over a million users per day looking to download OSS. If you have binaries on SF you can reach these people through our very robust discovery tools and strength of our search results in Google. We also give project admins detailed download statistics.
  - NCommander 9y ago
    Are there any plans to push this code back upstream to Apache? My understanding is SF.net abandoned the legacy alexandria (the PHP code from VA Linux) source code, built the current version, and then sent to the Apache Foundation, but I'm not clear if this is a fork, or what sf.net's relation is with it's upstream. Also, since I'm on the topic, any chance slashdot will go back to an open source code model?
  - john_moscow 9y ago
    I'm sorry to be the party pooper here, but it looks like the relevance war to Github was lost ~7 years ago: https://trends.google.ca/trends/explore?date=all&q=github,sourceforge https://trends.google.ca/trends/explore?date=all&q=github,so...
    - loganabbott 9y ago
      GitHub is much larger by traffic, but that doesn't mean we are going to abandon the million users we get every day and the 430,000 projects hosted at SourceForge. It's not a zero sum game. Some people like using GitHub's suite of tools, while also taking advantage of SourceForge mailing lists, project website hosting, detailed download statistics, and distribution/discovery capability. Our GitHub Sync Tool lets project owners use both with ease.
      - 9y ago

mgbmtl 9y ago

If anyone from Gitlab is listening: github sync is a really important feature for FOSS projects. Glad that SourceForge implemented it. (In a large-ish FOSS project, we are trying to move to self-hosted Gitlab, but the lack of sync means that people have to fully buy-in or manually sync their extensions/modules, which is causing major friction)

krisives 9y ago
Is Sync specific to Visual Studio?
- insomniacity 9y ago
  Visual Studio uses Sync to refer to git push and pull, as far as I can tell. (I avoid it and use the command line). In this context I think they're referring to tools to automatically sync your git/wiki/releases etc from Github to other platforms like Gitlab.
  - sli 9y ago
    Repos can be mirrored by just adding another origin, can't they? The others, though, yeah. Those are handy.
    - derimagia 9y ago
      Not exactly - you can then push all branches and they will be the same but then if the source repo changes you need to manually push for you. True sync would do this for you, along with ideally issues/wiki/etc.
      - lucideer 9y ago
        > if the source repo changes you need to manually push Gitlab definitely does this automatically for you if you mirror the repository. Or am I misunderstanding how this feature works?

MikkoFinell 9y ago

Wasn't it sourceforge that injected malware into downloaded programs? At least that's what pops into my head every time I see a sourceforge link, and why I avoid anything that's hosted on there.

loganabbott 9y ago
It was, but we ended that practice immediately after acquiring SourceForge in 2016. More info in the OP or in an AMA I did here: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_of_sourceforge_since_its_acquisition_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_...
- Moru 9y ago
  But it will be hard to rebuild the trust once ruined.
  - coverband 9y ago
    Sure, but it starts with goodwill...
    - behringer 9y ago
      Goodwill only goes so far. When a restaurant is infested with roaches, you can't just hand food out to people and expect anyone to think the restaurant cleaned up and fumigated. You have to like, tell people that.
- smacktoward 9y ago
  That's very good to hear! I'm honestly not sure if you wouldn't be better off changing the name of the service to something else at this point. People who just want to download binaries won't care what the name is, and developers who want to use the full spectrum of services will have enough bad associations with the name "SourceForge" at this point that keeping it could end up driving away more users than it attracts. And all the time and energy it'll take to rehabilitate the SourceForge brand could just as easily go towards building up some new brand instead, without all the baggage the old name carries. (It's possible I'm overestimating how long peoples' memories are here, of course. But when I hear "SourceForge" I still think of all the bad stuff they did in the past, so presumably there are at least a few others out there like me as well.)

hanley 9y ago

Looks like a good list of features, except for the HTML5 Speedtest. Why was that needed?

loganabbott 9y ago
We had built it for another internal project before we acquired SourceForge, so we decided to release it on SourceForge since people seemed to like it.
da_chicken 9y ago
Because it's a multi-site file host, and knowing your connection speed to your file host sites can help determine which site to prefer.

minxomat 9y ago

Any plans on expanding: - the ticket system (connectors to external systems, boards, etc.) - CI connectors - integrations for team systems (Slack, MS Teams, ...)

loganabbott 9y ago
Yes definitely. Second half of 2018.

aphextron 9y ago

Brought to you by Google AdSense What exactly is "new" besides the brutally awful design and color scheming? I see the same malware laden downloads that can be found anywhere else on the internet, surrounded by ads as was there before. Over 600 separate HTTP requests and counting on a project page? Really? You seriously expect developers to use this?

dbg31415 9y ago
Yeah, I halfway expected Wappalyzer to say, "Built with PHP-Nuke." But maybe they stopped injecting ads into open-source downloads at least? Can't imagine why anyone would trust them again.
- loganabbott 9y ago
  Yeah we ended that practice as soon as we acquired SourceForge over a year ago, and we have nothing to do with the company that made those decisions in the first place. It's in the blog post. As for ads/design- we know we can't please everyone and still keep the lights on. If you login you won't see any ads.
  - signal11 9y ago
    I wish you every success and am not going to hold pre-acquisition decisions against you. The last thing FL/OSS code hosting needs is a monoculture. However, if you could publicize -- anywhere -- how you plan to monetize, that would be very useful in building back user trust (just my 2c). Also, re design - it would be very useful to have something comparable to Github/Bitbucket (and Gitlab I guess), all of which are in a similar space. Perhaps one for the roadmap? Thanks again!
    - loganabbott 9y ago
      Right now we monetize via display ads, but any logged in user or project admin will not see any ads. We are looking at ways to cut down on the amount of display ads going forward, and have already begun doing that as we get more direct partnerships.

krisives 9y ago

Glad to see they are removing their adware from packages. I believe the damage is already done though and nobody will trust a binary from that place ever again.

loganabbott 9y ago
Just focused on doing right by the 1 million daily users that come to SourceForge to download one of 430,000 projects hosted there.

fuball63 9y ago

I've been on SourceForge a while, and I really like it. It always looked a little outdated, and there was the whole malware incident, but for hosting code with discussion boards and ticket systems, it does the job nicely. Obviously the malware thing was really bad, but in general I think it gets a bad rap because it wasn't the trendy new thing. I personally liked the old UI, but I'm happy for the new change because it's good for the future of the platform.

mkroman 9y ago
May I ask why you don't use any of the alternatives? GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, etc.?
- fuball63 9y ago
  I use sourceforge for games, github for other projects, and bitbucket for work. It just happened that I had sourceforge first. For the features I use, they're all pretty much the same... The only "advanced" feature I use is Travis CI integration on github. Edit: now that I think of it, ive used a githook in bitbucket too.

jasonmaydie 9y ago

I hope they got rid of the guy who suggested bundling installers

loganabbott 9y ago
They're no longer at SourceForge.

shadowtree 9y ago

Sad state of affairs that something like ScourceForge cannot operate as a paid-for service, but only as a "tech-influencer" ad site. quote from here: https://slashdotmedia.com/about-slashdot-media/ https://slashdotmedia.com/about-slashdot-media/ Not attacking the Abbotts and their SlashDotMedia and BizX web media influencer conglomerate, 100% legitimate way of doing business, but an overall observation on services that can't be operated as standalone businesses. Also an illustration how big the tech dependency on advertising is, from Google to this. Remove ads from the web and a shitload of stuff disappears.

loganabbott 9y ago
It's something we're trying to come up with solutions for, so that we can reduce or eliminate ads on SourceForge. But for now, any user or developer who creates an account on SourceForge will never see ads.
aldanor 9y ago
ScourgeForge?
user5994461 9y ago
That's not true. GitHub is a paid for service that is profitable and provides the same as sourceforge.

sigzero 9y ago

Kudos! Keep improving. The source hosting "business" isn't a zero sum game. Everyone benefits from choice and competition.

nik736 9y ago

They should hire a new lead designer.

jhallenworld 9y ago

I notice that there is no automatic spell checking in edit boxes, for example when someone creates a bug ticket. Github has this. Any plans to add this feature? Or is there a control to enable it that I'm missing?

hk__2 9y ago
Isn’t that handled by your browser rather than GitHub?
- jhallenworld 9y ago
  Apparently it's a bug with the markdown editor they are using: https://forge-allura.apache.org/p/allura/tickets/7954/ https://forge-allura.apache.org/p/allura/tickets/7954/

alkonaut 9y ago

I applaud the initiative but when I look at what happened to Slashdot, I’m not enthusiastic about Sourceforge succeeding any better under the same ownership (I have no idea whether Slashdot makes money but it’s a horrible community these days, and nothing seems to be done about it.)

PacoFromBrazil 9y ago
I share the same feelings. I used Slashdot for many years, starting when Rob Malda ran the site. The past year or so has been the worst, in my opinion, even when considering the Beta era of discontent. The stories used to be primarily about tech (or related subjects), with a minor focus on politics. But lately I think it has been the opposite. There is much more emphasis on general politics, with tech being a minor focus, in my opinion. While I'm not very interested in politics to begin with, what bothers me the most is how partisan I think things have gotten. The stories have what I consider a rather left-wing bias. The same goes for the modding, where I think it's common to see centrist and right-wing comments often downmodded, even when they express a very reasonable and relevant set of ideas. I feel that Slashdot has moved from perhaps being an open, varied, quasi-libertarian environment to one that's much less open, much less diverse, and much less enjoyable. So I stopped visiting it about a month ago, and I don't miss it at all.
- strictnein 9y ago
  > The stories used to be primarily about tech (or related subjects), with a minor focus on politics. But lately I think it has been the opposite. There is much more emphasis on general politics, with tech being a minor focus, in my opinion. I left for basically the same reason, but quite a while ago. I forget which of the editors it was, but he would interject politics into everything. And even after people asked for a politics section (which could then be turned off), to keep politics out of the tech stuff, he would still put political stuff all over the place.

usernam 9y ago

Whoa there: fixed top banner with an actual banner at the top, covering a whopping 20% of my screen height and 80% of width. Didn't see something like this in a long time. I'm never going to interact through that as a developer on daily basis. Not even considering the poor UI for just every feature in SF. The only thing SF has for it, currently, is a mailing list for each project. GitHub and GitLab should have this. Interaction and discussion though "issues" is horrible.

loganabbott 9y ago
If you're logged in you don't see any ads.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
benstrumental 9y ago
> GitHub and GitLab should have this. Interaction and discussion though "issues" is horrible. Agreed. It would be a huge win for GitHub or GitLab to provide this service. There really are no great alternatives beyond hosting a mailman server yourself.
- matt_the_bass 9y ago
  What about something like MailChimp?
- vonnieda 9y ago
  Google Groups works well for this. I use it for my open source projects. You can interact with it via the web, if you want, but it also has a full mailman style interface, which is how I use it.
connorshea 9y ago
We have an issue for mailing lists in GitLab here[0] if you want to leave any comments, but it's not a particularly active issue and I'm not sure how likely we'd be to actually build this into the product. I'll update this comment if I find a more active/fleshed-out issue for the same functionality. [0]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4272 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4272

timschroedernet 9y ago

A company whose website doesn't have a jobs section is doomed.

mrtweetyhack 9y ago

A case of too little and WAY too late. Sourceforge is like the Myspace, long dead. It's not even a good try.

choward 9y ago

Atrocious. They lock a pointless navigation bar to the top and changed the theme. Can someone explain why I would ever want to use this product. They bundled adware with their software ffs. Inexcusable. They need to just die.

Osiris 9y ago
In the announcement: "Removed bundled adware from projects". At least it's a step forward.
- choward 9y ago
  The fact that they were okay with doing that to begin with is what concerns me.

yellowpug 9y ago

surprised SourceForge is still alive

bla2 9y ago

I for one am excited about this. I used to have stuff on sourceforge, and to me it feels like they're on track to become relevant again.

partycoder 9y ago

SourceForge uses very invasive ads.

anowlcalledjosh 9y ago

Has nobody in the design team ever tested this on a screen at less than 4K? At 1366×768 the title is jammed right up against the left edge of the screen.

Paperweight 9y ago

position: sticky; /* Frames are back, baby! */

gitgud 9y ago

boyter 9y ago

Nice. A large improvement. Have been waiting for this for a while since it was announced that it was sold. No idea if anyone working on sourceforge is likely to be here or not but I would love to know if I could get an API of the projects there or even just a list. I would like to add more of souceforge into searchcode.com and would prefer to not scrape the site.

iwanttodie 9y ago

To loganabbott-- The new design looks pretty good, or at least more modern. Also I just wanted to emphasize with you that you had to field the same "do you still bundle malware" question...eight times by my count.

loganabbott 9y ago
Thanks. I am aware.

carussell 9y ago

Logan, I just went through the process to create an account. The signup page has a few employment related fields that are required to create an account. They probably shouldn't be. EDIT: There's also this[1] alignment issue in the settings wrt to "City of residence" where the text field is off by ~1 pixel. EDIT2: On the page where I uploaded my SSH key[2], it says updates occur after a small delay. The linked page in the docs says that this delay is ~30 minutes. In any case, I was able to begin using SSH immediately. If that info is no longer fresh, I suggest removing it, especially since it's probably a turnoff for a lot of users. EDIT3: When I run sf-help --web at the shell, it prints an error: [colbyrussell@shell-22009 ~]$ sf-help --web Use of uninitialized value $user in concatenation (.) or string at /usr/bin/sf-help line 96 1. https://imgur.com/a/2d0lr https://imgur.com/a/2d0lr 2. https://sourceforge.net/auth/shell_services https://sourceforge.net/auth/shell_services

loganabbott 9y ago
Great thanks for the feedback. Looking into it.

ianamartin 9y ago

Well, at least it's not as mind-punchingly slow as it used to be. Progress?

wodenokoto 9y ago

I got into SVC / code repositories after the whole sourceforge serves malware debacle, so I'm not familiar with SF from a developer perspective. Is it a got repo? Mercurial? Something else completely?

mmsimanga 9y ago

Anecdotal. I find Sourceforge has more end-user applications. By this I mean applications you can download, install and have a user interface. A good example is Squirrel SQL[1]. Github seems to be a coders repository. Filled with libraries to incorporate into other programs. [1]https://sourceforge.net/projects/squirrel-sql/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/squirrel-sql/

scruffyherder 9y ago

Probably far too late to mention, but I have a bunch of projects on SF, and now I can't scroll through them on the me drop down menu. It feels.. strange, and more responsive than the old stuff. I guess that's just change. I never was a fan of github, I always preferred the geodistribution of SF, and of course it was so easy to make binary packages for end users. It's a shame the other people had to ruin a great place with selling the adware space, and Im so glad it's all gone. I just fear in this environment of hipster flash with no substance, that a well rounded site like SF will never get the hipster VC financing that github does. I hope you guys don't shutter any time soon, I love SF!

Zhrani 9y ago

hello world!