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I think a huge difference between github and sourceforge is that user base and the fact that github ends up being used by a lot of private companies wanting to
by munk-a 5y ago
I think a huge difference between github and sourceforge is that user base and the fact that github ends up being used by a lot of private companies wanting to host their private repositories (and being willing to pay money to do so).
To my knowledge (I was very young during the period when sourceforge was still good) sourceforge never really attracted private customers by offering value adds to CVS/SVN so it didn't have a reliable non-donation revenue model. Github has accumulated a cash cow in the form of a lot of companies using it for issue tracking and as a nice UI into their repository state - this doesn't make them secure for ever, they do have some very real competition and the fact that they are maintaining an ecosystem means they have a lot of costs beyond just hosting but I think they're in a place where, if they started to inject obnoxious ads, they believe their revenue would suffer even in the short term.
- zeruch 5y ago"To my knowledge (I was very young during the period when sourceforge was still good) sourceforge never really attracted private customers by offering value adds to CVS/SVN so it didn't have a reliable non-donation revenue model." Correct. At the time it was a much tough hill to climb; the business climate was still not ready for it by and large; quite resistant actually, hence why for a while an on-prem version of the software was developed and sold and supported.
- fmajid 5y agoThe Information had an excellent article a few years back about the conflict between the Enterprise sales people and those responsible for the community. The latter won and it was the right business decision. Thinking of GitHub as yet another enterprise software development tool rather than the premier social network for developers shows a breathtaking lack of vision.