5 ms·

I suppose that Freenode will survive the mass exodus going on right now, but will become something akin to the Sourceforge of IRC afterwards.

Avamander 5y ago
Sourceforge has tried hard to get rid of that reputation under new management.
- wearywanderer 5y ago
  I'm afraid they may as well try to bail the Titanic. That ship has already sunk.
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    I dunno I think it is doable. They still have a fairly well known name and a fair number of projects are still there (somehow). Their real problem is the actual website UI sucks. I don't think they've changed it for about a decade. If I were them I'd take something like Gogs and rebuild the site based on that.
    - bawolff 5y ago
      Their real problem is that github exists now
    - badsectoracula 5y ago
      Gogs (and Github, Gitlab, etc) are different than Sourceforge though, SF's project pages are targeted towards users of the software, whereas Github/Gogs/etc are targeted towards developers. Now obviously when you have developers make that choice you get them show a preference towards developer-targeted services, but at the end of the day they are not the same. Notice how in a typical Sourceforge page you get the name of the project right at the front with big letters, right below it a rating by its users, how popular it is and when it was last updated (though that date is misleading because it tracks all the project data and not releases) as the most important bits, with a big fat green DOWNLOAD button next to those and buttons to be notified for updates and sharing the software with others? Then the information panel below these describe the software, what features it has, etc followed by screenshots, category information, license, etc and then comments/reviews by users. This panel is just one tab with others being the files for users to download, reviews, support, forums, etc. The code, where you can see the repository, is at the last tab. This is a design very strongly targeted towards users, unlike Github/etc that right in the front page of a project show the repository and rely on Readmes to show any information. Some projects even use Github (or Gitlab or whatever similar tool/service) for the repository while keeping other functionality, like downloads, mailing lists (that AFAIK no other similar service offers, btw) in Sourceforge. That is not to say that Sourceforge's UI doesn't need a bit of a cleanup, but replacing it with something like Gogs (or anything Github-like) isn't going to work since Sourceforge's UI has a different target and goal.
      - dustyharddrive 5y ago
        > mailing lists (that AFAIK no other similar service offers) https://sourcehut.org https://sourcehut.org (the hosted version is https://sr.ht https://sr.ht) has a mailing lists feature
wyclif 5y ago
I'm always in the #python channel and I've been glancing at the peak time usage levels. Anecdotal, and it could be that channel is an outlier, but nothing much seems to have changed.

Avamander 5y ago

Sourceforge has tried hard to get rid of that reputation under new management.

wearywanderer 5y ago
I'm afraid they may as well try to bail the Titanic. That ship has already sunk.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  I dunno I think it is doable. They still have a fairly well known name and a fair number of projects are still there (somehow). Their real problem is the actual website UI sucks. I don't think they've changed it for about a decade. If I were them I'd take something like Gogs and rebuild the site based on that.
  - bawolff 5y ago
    Their real problem is that github exists now
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    Gogs (and Github, Gitlab, etc) are different than Sourceforge though, SF's project pages are targeted towards users of the software, whereas Github/Gogs/etc are targeted towards developers. Now obviously when you have developers make that choice you get them show a preference towards developer-targeted services, but at the end of the day they are not the same. Notice how in a typical Sourceforge page you get the name of the project right at the front with big letters, right below it a rating by its users, how popular it is and when it was last updated (though that date is misleading because it tracks all the project data and not releases) as the most important bits, with a big fat green DOWNLOAD button next to those and buttons to be notified for updates and sharing the software with others? Then the information panel below these describe the software, what features it has, etc followed by screenshots, category information, license, etc and then comments/reviews by users. This panel is just one tab with others being the files for users to download, reviews, support, forums, etc. The code, where you can see the repository, is at the last tab. This is a design very strongly targeted towards users, unlike Github/etc that right in the front page of a project show the repository and rely on Readmes to show any information. Some projects even use Github (or Gitlab or whatever similar tool/service) for the repository while keeping other functionality, like downloads, mailing lists (that AFAIK no other similar service offers, btw) in Sourceforge. That is not to say that Sourceforge's UI doesn't need a bit of a cleanup, but replacing it with something like Gogs (or anything Github-like) isn't going to work since Sourceforge's UI has a different target and goal.
    - dustyharddrive 5y ago
      > mailing lists (that AFAIK no other similar service offers) https://sourcehut.org https://sourcehut.org (the hosted version is https://sr.ht https://sr.ht) has a mailing lists feature

wyclif 5y ago

I'm always in the #python channel and I've been glancing at the peak time usage levels. Anecdotal, and it could be that channel is an outlier, but nothing much seems to have changed.