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Good write-up, thanks. But this isn't a sustainable strategy. You're basically asserting SourceForge's unique selling point/competitive advantage is its abilit

by mcgwiz 13y ago

Good write-up, thanks. But this isn't a sustainable strategy. You're basically asserting SourceForge's unique selling point/competitive advantage is its ability to host files. You've got to be kidding. GitHub has taken off like a rocket whose thrust show no signs of abating. SourceForge is going down the drain with a passiveness that shows no sign of abating--unless it is conceptually rethought, from the ground up. You know, does something new and innovative to address project needs from a contemporary point of view. Dice certainly doesn't seem to have an appetite for that kind of risk, just an appetite for the last drops of life sucked out of a dying carcass by throwing leeches on it.

chrismorgan 13y ago
Take a look at some of SourceForge's top projects at http://sourceforge.net/top http://sourceforge.net/top and you'll see a collection of very well known projects which GitHub cannot serve in its current form. That is a rather important aspect of SourceForge. VLC, 7-Zip, PortableApps.com, FileZilla, MinGW, Apache OpenOffice, GIMP, Notepad++, ...
JohnTHaller 13y ago
SourceForge's old strategy of having ads on-site shown on project pages and as an interstitial when you download a file in a browser (but not via wget, NSIS, etc) was unsustainable. With ad revenue declining across the web, freeware/open source developers and hosters will need to find other avenues to support things. SourceForge was in a very precarious position financially a few years ago as ad revenue fell and there was whisperings of them shutting down entirely. Offer-based installers are one way of monetizing and have become exceedingly popular, especially with closed-source freeware. Unfortunately, most of these installers are designed to trick users into installing (or go so far as to install without use consent). To SourceForge's credit, they make a single offer which is clearly defined and even have a link to a page explaining why the offer is made. Compare this to your typical download from Download.com which includes multiple offers including several tricks to get you to install (pages that seem to be license agreements for the main software but install adware when you click agree, pages that list a standard and a custom install type and you'll get adware unless you pick custom and uncheck the offer, etc). The other option is freemium pricing, free for smaller users but bigger users pay. To go this route, you basically need to go after the enterprise to make money. Github has taken this route from the beginning and achieved profitability in 2009 if I recall. I'm not sure if Github is still profitable, but they got $100m in funding last year, so they have money to burn. That could be why the added binary hosting back in. They had it originally but removed it due to costs years ago. Still, I'm unsure if they would put up with a project as large as the ones on SourceForge (PortableApps.com, FileZilla, GIMP for Windows, etc) as that is quite a bit of bandwidth to give away for free as a loss leader (since Github wouldn't even make money on ads for those downloads). Unfortunately, SourceForge has no enterprise offerings at present, so this isn't a viable revenue source today. They could explore this route in the future as a competitor to Github, though. It would be a bit of a pivot for them and not without its own risks. But, even if they go down this route, they still need to have the revenue today to keep going. So, it's a bit of a catch 22.
- mcgwiz 13y ago
  Thanks for your reply. First off, you're right, cheers for resuscitating SF. Not that it would by any means be easy, I was suggesting a conceptual re-think of SF to attract and enthrall new users/projects. However your response (and the refrain I hear from others) indicates a strategy of monetizing the big binary projects you already have. That's cool, and that's a market. But I would fear - those projects being coaxed away by innovations from services in adjacent markets (GitHub using enterprise revenue to cover download costs), and - those big binary projects eventually dying (as projects sometimes do), without replacement from new young projects (because they will prefer to start on GitHub and will then mature there). Perhaps go after the conceptual strategy of "SF is where you go when you've grow out of GitHub". Good luck.
  - JohnTHaller 13y ago
    First off, SourceForge isn't me :) I just run one of the largest projects hosted on SourceForge. Second, Github doesn't really offer what the big binaries on SourceForge need which is tons of bandwidth to host downloads. Github ditched downloads back in December but appears to have added them back in with 'Releases' last month. It remains to be seen how much bandwidth a free and open source project can actually push through Github, though. And whether Github will keep Releases/downloads around at all since they've only been around for a month and were unceremoniously killed off just 8 months prior. SourceForge is a known quantity with download mirrors all over the world that you can push 10s of TBs per month through for free as long as you're a fully open source project. Github, on the other hand, is an unknown quantity with respect to big downloads.
- ams6110 13y ago
  SourceForge used to have an enterprise edition, but it looks like they sold it off ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SourceForge_Enterprise_Edition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SourceForge_Enterprise_Edition )
- brownbat 13y ago
  > quite a bit of bandwidth to give away for free as a loss leader Really naive question, I'm sure, probably a simple answer for anyone working in providing services at this scale, but... Why is everyone's business so dependent on funding expensive bandwidth? We've had bandwidth sharing for over a decade, what didn't P2P solve?
Zelphyr 13y ago
> GitHub has taken off like a rocket I think this is in part because they charge. I like this model. Its simple. You want to use GitHub for free then you have to make your code freely available. You want to keep it proprietary then you have to pay for your account. Where this doesn't translate well with SourceForge is that it was designed from the start to be of, by, and for Open Source projects. So the vast majority of projects would be non-paying. However, they may be able to add some features that appeal to proprietary projects who are willing to pay and use that revenue to offset any losses. It would be hard work but ultimately I think it would be be better than the appearance (if indeed it is just that) of distributing malware.
- rictic 13y ago
  The vast majority of projects on github also do not pay. The two major features you pay for on github are larger repositories, and private repositories. The free offering is good enough for almost all open source projects.
  - JohnTHaller 13y ago
    The big issue would be downloads when it comes to real apps, though. Github discontinued binary downloads in December of 2012. But, they then added the 'Releases' functionality last month. I don't think they'd put up with the large numbers of downloads (and the associated bandwidth) of big projects like FileZilla, though.
    - pjhyett 13y ago
      If those projects are looking for a new home, we'd be happy to welcome them at GitHub.
      - JohnTHaller 13y ago
        From a quick look, SourceForge pushed out about 19TB of FileZilla bandwidth in the last 30 days in terms of binary downloads. I'm not sure any projects on GitHub are pushing that kind of bandwidth for binary downloads yet. Or are they? In terms of PortableApps.com, I don't think we'd be a good fit for GitHub since we're a project that's a conglomeration of apps made portable (for USB and cloud use). I think we're around 90TB of bandwidth for downloads in the last month for our open source apps via SourceForge (some of our open source apps the publishers self-host like Inkscape and LibreOffice so we don't push those through our SourceForge project).

by mcgwiz 13y ago

chrismorgan 13y ago

Take a look at some of SourceForge's top projects at http://sourceforge.net/top http://sourceforge.net/top and you'll see a collection of very well known projects which GitHub cannot serve in its current form. That is a rather important aspect of SourceForge. VLC, 7-Zip, PortableApps.com, FileZilla, MinGW, Apache OpenOffice, GIMP, Notepad++, ...

JohnTHaller 13y ago

SourceForge's old strategy of having ads on-site shown on project pages and as an interstitial when you download a file in a browser (but not via wget, NSIS, etc) was unsustainable. With ad revenue declining across the web, freeware/open source developers and hosters will need to find other avenues to support things. SourceForge was in a very precarious position financially a few years ago as ad revenue fell and there was whisperings of them shutting down entirely. Offer-based installers are one way of monetizing and have become exceedingly popular, especially with closed-source freeware. Unfortunately, most of these installers are designed to trick users into installing (or go so far as to install without use consent). To SourceForge's credit, they make a single offer which is clearly defined and even have a link to a page explaining why the offer is made. Compare this to your typical download from Download.com which includes multiple offers including several tricks to get you to install (pages that seem to be license agreements for the main software but install adware when you click agree, pages that list a standard and a custom install type and you'll get adware unless you pick custom and uncheck the offer, etc). The other option is freemium pricing, free for smaller users but bigger users pay. To go this route, you basically need to go after the enterprise to make money. Github has taken this route from the beginning and achieved profitability in 2009 if I recall. I'm not sure if Github is still profitable, but they got $100m in funding last year, so they have money to burn. That could be why the added binary hosting back in. They had it originally but removed it due to costs years ago. Still, I'm unsure if they would put up with a project as large as the ones on SourceForge (PortableApps.com, FileZilla, GIMP for Windows, etc) as that is quite a bit of bandwidth to give away for free as a loss leader (since Github wouldn't even make money on ads for those downloads). Unfortunately, SourceForge has no enterprise offerings at present, so this isn't a viable revenue source today. They could explore this route in the future as a competitor to Github, though. It would be a bit of a pivot for them and not without its own risks. But, even if they go down this route, they still need to have the revenue today to keep going. So, it's a bit of a catch 22.

mcgwiz 13y ago
Thanks for your reply. First off, you're right, cheers for resuscitating SF. Not that it would by any means be easy, I was suggesting a conceptual re-think of SF to attract and enthrall new users/projects. However your response (and the refrain I hear from others) indicates a strategy of monetizing the big binary projects you already have. That's cool, and that's a market. But I would fear - those projects being coaxed away by innovations from services in adjacent markets (GitHub using enterprise revenue to cover download costs), and - those big binary projects eventually dying (as projects sometimes do), without replacement from new young projects (because they will prefer to start on GitHub and will then mature there). Perhaps go after the conceptual strategy of "SF is where you go when you've grow out of GitHub". Good luck.
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  First off, SourceForge isn't me :) I just run one of the largest projects hosted on SourceForge. Second, Github doesn't really offer what the big binaries on SourceForge need which is tons of bandwidth to host downloads. Github ditched downloads back in December but appears to have added them back in with 'Releases' last month. It remains to be seen how much bandwidth a free and open source project can actually push through Github, though. And whether Github will keep Releases/downloads around at all since they've only been around for a month and were unceremoniously killed off just 8 months prior. SourceForge is a known quantity with download mirrors all over the world that you can push 10s of TBs per month through for free as long as you're a fully open source project. Github, on the other hand, is an unknown quantity with respect to big downloads.
ams6110 13y ago
SourceForge used to have an enterprise edition, but it looks like they sold it off ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SourceForge_Enterprise_Edition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SourceForge_Enterprise_Edition )
brownbat 13y ago
> quite a bit of bandwidth to give away for free as a loss leader Really naive question, I'm sure, probably a simple answer for anyone working in providing services at this scale, but... Why is everyone's business so dependent on funding expensive bandwidth? We've had bandwidth sharing for over a decade, what didn't P2P solve?

Zelphyr 13y ago

> GitHub has taken off like a rocket I think this is in part because they charge. I like this model. Its simple. You want to use GitHub for free then you have to make your code freely available. You want to keep it proprietary then you have to pay for your account. Where this doesn't translate well with SourceForge is that it was designed from the start to be of, by, and for Open Source projects. So the vast majority of projects would be non-paying. However, they may be able to add some features that appeal to proprietary projects who are willing to pay and use that revenue to offset any losses. It would be hard work but ultimately I think it would be be better than the appearance (if indeed it is just that) of distributing malware.

rictic 13y ago
The vast majority of projects on github also do not pay. The two major features you pay for on github are larger repositories, and private repositories. The free offering is good enough for almost all open source projects.
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  The big issue would be downloads when it comes to real apps, though. Github discontinued binary downloads in December of 2012. But, they then added the 'Releases' functionality last month. I don't think they'd put up with the large numbers of downloads (and the associated bandwidth) of big projects like FileZilla, though.
  - pjhyett 13y ago
    If those projects are looking for a new home, we'd be happy to welcome them at GitHub.
    - JohnTHaller 13y ago
      From a quick look, SourceForge pushed out about 19TB of FileZilla bandwidth in the last 30 days in terms of binary downloads. I'm not sure any projects on GitHub are pushing that kind of bandwidth for binary downloads yet. Or are they? In terms of PortableApps.com, I don't think we'd be a good fit for GitHub since we're a project that's a conglomeration of apps made portable (for USB and cloud use). I think we're around 90TB of bandwidth for downloads in the last month for our open source apps via SourceForge (some of our open source apps the publishers self-host like Inkscape and LibreOffice so we don't push those through our SourceForge project).