8 ms·

It makes me sad to see a respectable piece of open source software hosted on this site with its intrusive advertising practices such as ads with fake "install"

by bluehex 11y ago

It makes me sad to see a respectable piece of open source software hosted on this site with its intrusive advertising practices such as ads with fake "install" buttons on the download page. What is the advantage of using Sourceforge these days when github and bitbucket are free for open source?

res0nat0r 11y ago
All I see after clicking download is a direct link to the file, which is in fact just a .tar.gz.
- jbnicolai 11y ago
  Are you sure you don't have any ad blocker installed?
  - vampirechicken 11y ago
    A reasonable followup question why wouldn't one have an ad blocker installed?
    - sp332 11y ago
      The original question was, why use a host that tries to show you ads in the first place?
    - GrantSolar 11y ago
      Because it's how 99% of websites get their funding, allowing them to survive. Why have an adblocker installed when you can avoid the sites with obnoxious adverts?
      - jkyle 11y ago
        Sometimes I have to get useful tools from them....like tmux. As to why I use Adblock, I've never. Not once. Ever. Bought anything from an ad on a website. I _have_ bought books and such from the referral links on blogs (which adblock doesn't block). The reason I use adblock is because I'm not the demographic ads on websites are targeting. So websites aren't losing any revenue by me not seeing their ads.
        adamrt 11y ago
        That's now how ads always work. Many sites get revenue based on impressions, not clicks or conversions.
        PeterUstinox 11y ago
        Of course they lose revenue. your view is like any other. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_impression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_impression) you won't be taking money from the company, which started the ad campaign. also: don't underestimate the effects on brand value, which will come subconsciously, if you look at ads. You will know certain companies are still active etc. This is why you don't necessarily need to be targeted. simply informed. The "sometimes" you talk about should just be with ads on. it won't hurt much, because it's just sometimes.
        brodney 11y ago
        > don't underestimate the effects on brand value, which will come subconsciously, if you look at ads. This is exactly why I use adblock.
        jkyle 11y ago
        Only if you view CPI in isolation as money from the sky. Marketers estimate the CPI they're willing to pay based on estimated conversions per impression. Ultimately, the money comes from sales. It always comes from sales. If I don't ever purchase anything from a website ad, my impressions are worth zero. My impressions, and impressions by those like me, will drive down the price a company is willing to pay per impression since the conversion ratio also goes down. In fact, my impressions incur a negative effect since it still incurs a cost to the advertiser. In the best of all possible worlds, only those who will ultimately buy a product are displayed the ad. Resulting in a 100% conversion ratio. Each impression would be maximally valuable and the price paid for that impression would rise to reflect that. Those of us who use adblock have removed ourself from the market and from the conversion ratio calculations and cost per impression to the advertiser.
        threatofrain 11y ago
        They might lose revenue at first, but in a way that is entirely healthy for a larger system of advertisers and clients, in that both advertiser and client reassess the effectiveness of an instrument (an ad network or product), and thus reassess the correctness of a price for an advertising opportunity. Maybe I'm apathetic to these arguments because I'm quite comfortable paying for content and services, and I'm comfortable with a version of the web where a paying class gets to have paying-class products. If the public feels there should be a free thing, then let it be funded by taxes.
      - exarch 11y ago
        >Because it's how 99% of websites get their funding, allowing them to survive. So then, I'll unblock ads to help companies survive just as soon as those companies start giving me money to help me survive.
        timdierks 11y ago
        If you don't value what the website is giving you, why are you visiting it?
        phzn 11y ago
        Curious, if I visit the site in question using lynx/links am I still in the wrong?
        mburns 11y ago
        At least with lynx/links, you don't get any javascript functionality and the experience as a whole is diminished. With an ad blocker, you selectively block the javascript you don't like but that the operators rely on to bring in revenue, while still getting the otherwise 'full' experience.
        Crito 11y ago
        If sourceforge went under, do you think I'd be unable to get the source to tmux? Since obviously I'd still be able to get tmux, what value is sourceforge actually providing me? They might be providing tmux developers some value, but they aren't providing any value to me.
        homulilly 11y ago
        I value what these sites are giving me, but not enough to put up with ads. If adblock didn't exist I'd probably visit places like sf or youtube a lot less.
      - Karunamon 11y ago
        Because the venn diagram of "obnoxious adverts" and "adverts" is nearly a perfect circle.
      - endgame 11y ago
        Advertisers had their chance to not suck, but they blew it. Sorry.
    - bshimmin 11y ago
      If you're developing anything for the web that might involve advertising, and even certain things that don't, it makes it hard to test, especially if you continually forget to disable your ad blocker. (I'm only being marginally facetious; I worked with a developer who refused to accept that his ad blocker prevented him from seeing issues with Omniture - now Site Catalyst - eating mouse clicks.)
    - wodenokoto 11y ago
      That is actually a rather unreasonable question. It's like telling Firefox users to install chrome. Or that ponzu schemes are okay as long as you yourself don't have to deal with them.
      - apricot 11y ago
        A ponzu scheme is a fraudulent investment operation where the operator pays returns to its investors from citrus-flavoured soy sauce sent to the operators by new investors.
    - recursive 11y ago
      Because I don't want my user agent to be modifying documents I'm requesting.
- djeikyb 11y ago
  If you try to curl that "direct" link, you'll find it isn't.
treve 11y ago
Not having to move is a major plus.
kkthegamer 11y ago
SourceForge itself is free software. I think that's one possible reason to use it rather than GitHub or else. The other possible is that SourceForge provide mailing list server and other service for projects. Anyway, you won't move a project around unless you have some strong motivations.
- olalonde 11y ago
  Is SourceForge really open source? Guess I must have missed that news. Regardless, Gitlab would still be a better choice in terms of UX and is also open source.
  - tobias2014 11y ago
    Yes it is. http://sourceforge.net/create/ http://sourceforge.net/create/ (see also https://allura.apache.org/ https://allura.apache.org/)
  - e12e 11y ago
    It has been released as Apache Allura, Wikipedia has a nice overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Allura http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Allura Install docs: https://forge-allura.apache.org/docs/getting_started/installation.html https://forge-allura.apache.org/docs/getting_started/install... I agree that sourceforge.net as a service might not be my favourite, but Allura the forge-software seems pretty good. I think the only thing that comes close is the stack from Canonical -- but Allura seems more viable to self-host (and scale up when needed -- rather than "only a vm" or "full cluster"). It also seems less "overly opinionated", and still includes sensible defaults (contrast with getting up and running with Trac). YMMV, but it doesn't look half-bad. Right now I don't need anything more than what you can easily get with either a separate wiki+mercurial+mailing-list, "just" trac or fossil -- but for something in-between "too big to host internally" and "too complex for Trac to be easy" -- it looks rather interesting. I'd love to hear any war stories.
  - shmerl 11y ago
    Do you know if Gitlab allows attachments in bugs and comments? It's one of the major deficiencies in Github.
xienze 11y ago
> What is the advantage of using Sourceforge these days when github and bitbucket are free for open source? I imagine the author figures that moving is a pain. Don't forget, Sourceforge was the Github of yesteryear. I imagine in 10 years we may very well be asking the same of some old project hosted on Github.
- StefanKarpinski 11y ago
  Sourceforge's downfall was not finding a better business model than advertising – which has devolved into the worst kind of spammy ads. GitHub, on the other hand, has a solid business model that doesn't involve advertising. In fact, putting ads on the site would be suicide.
  - xienze 11y ago
    Sure, but you can't say with certainty that Github's fortunes won't change X years down the line is my point.
    - thramp 11y ago
      That’s true, but the risks are significantly diminished. As they say, your business model is your destiny, and if have a good business model...
  - imroot 11y ago
    Sourceforge tried to find a better business model -- sourceforge enterprise edition -- but then spun it off and then sold it to a different company (CollabNet) in 2007...then over the next 3-5 years, laid off almost everyone behind sourceforge.net/OSDN. The only thing left of the company now is thinkgeek.
- vog 11y ago
  > Don't forget, Sourceforge was the Github of yesteryear. Not really. At that time, there were almost no alternatives. Sourceforge was slow and bloated, even without ads. Nobody wanted to use it, but at least it was free (in the sense of free beer). And it took them ages to support SVN in addition to CVS. When they finally supported it, many project were already thinking about switching from SVN to a distributed VCS.
qrmn 11y ago
I'm also struggling to see any advantages to still using Sourceforge in 2015. Firstly, they're well-known by now to be complicit in sponsored 'wrapper' installers bundling some pretty awful stuff - check out what they did with FileZilla - which is an even more intrusive advertising practice than that. Secondly, they host a lot of executable code (and don't forget build scripts in source code, unless you check your Makefiles!), but they still don't use TLS, and don't even seem to have any plans to - which is by now negligent practice, I think, considering the widespread public knowledge of Hacking Team's (and GCHQ's) at-scale deployments of network-level file infectors.
Qwertious 11y ago
Github isn't completely open-source. Source: http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source-everything.html http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source-everyth...
perlgeek 11y ago
Even before github was around, sourceforge was a PITA. I remember clicking through the web UI for more than half an hour before finding the place where you could configure the project website/homepage. Also, trying to delete an abandoned project, which had a mailing list, but it wouldn't let me delete the mailing list, because there was still an admin in there (me!), and I couldn't leave the mailing list, because then it would have been without admin. D'uh. And you couldn't delete a project with an active mailing list... Then a few years later, after I didn't use SF much anymore, I tried to comment on the bug in the bug tracker, and didn't find any option to do that, even as a logged-in user. I used google code as soon as it became available, because it worked, and had a much cleaner admin interface. Not to mention user interface.
jlarocco 11y ago
Ditto. I more or less refuse to use Sourceforge. There's an up to date clone on GitHub at https://github.com/ThomasAdam/tmux https://github.com/ThomasAdam/tmux Can't send patches to it, but it's great if you're just building it.
- thomasadam 11y ago
  That's right, you can't send me patches as they're to be sent to the tmux mailing list. Is this not made clear already in the repository description?
  - jsalit 11y ago
    I don't think GP was criticizing, just making a note of it.
vog 11y ago
Or, they could go one step further and do it like WinSCP. That is, WinSCP has an own website that contains ads with fake download buttons. It's really nasty, but at least the advertisement payments go directly to the project, rather than just to the hosting service.
mrmondo 11y ago
I was thinking exactly this, I just logged a bug for them to move the project: https://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/tickets/192/ https://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/tickets/192/
- tslocum 11y ago
  Aaaaaaaaaaaaand it's closed. Without comment.
  - nchammas 11y ago
    Searching the tmux mailing list [0], it looks like there were some recent discussions about migrating to GitHub. Basically, it looks like the developers don't see any benefit to migrating that outweighs the cost of a migration. [1] There is a GitHub mirror [2] maintained by, I think, one of the developers, but they don't accept pull requests. It's interesting to note that, for such a popular project like tmux, there are so few contributors. [3] Five, to be exact. Maybe that's an artifact of how the mirroring to GitHub works (perhaps the commit authors aren't translated correctly?), but I suspect it's more an artifact of an outdated contribution process and tooling. [0] http://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/mailman/search/?q=github http://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/mailman/search/?q=github [1] http://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/mailman/message/33826395/ http://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/mailman/message/33826395/ [2] https://github.com/ThomasAdam/tmux https://github.com/ThomasAdam/tmux [3] https://github.com/ThomasAdam/tmux/graphs/contributors https://github.com/ThomasAdam/tmux/graphs/contributors
    - nicm 11y ago
      lots of people have contributed to tmux (on a quick grep through the logs, probably ~25 have made significant or multiple contributions, ~170 have made small contributions)
      - nchammas 11y ago
        Hi Nicholas! That's good to hear, and definitely makes more sense given how popular and old tmux is as a project. So I guess something just didn't translate correctly to Thomas's GitHub mirror.
glesica 11y ago
Does anyone who would be downloading tmux not use an ad blocker? Because if so, consider me shocked. I mean, not that the ads aren't still a moral concern, but from a practical standpoint it doesn't seem like a big deal. I didn't even realize Sourceforge still had ads...
jodooshi 11y ago
Perhaps no advantage, but it's a good thing. As in the CPU market, there are Intel, AMD, even another architecture alternatives, eg. ARM. It's just an analogy. :-)

by bluehex 11y ago

res0nat0r 11y ago

All I see after clicking download is a direct link to the file, which is in fact just a .tar.gz.

jbnicolai 11y ago
Are you sure you don't have any ad blocker installed?
- vampirechicken 11y ago
  A reasonable followup question why wouldn't one have an ad blocker installed?
  - sp332 11y ago
    The original question was, why use a host that tries to show you ads in the first place?
  - GrantSolar 11y ago
    Because it's how 99% of websites get their funding, allowing them to survive. Why have an adblocker installed when you can avoid the sites with obnoxious adverts?
    - jkyle 11y ago
      Sometimes I have to get useful tools from them....like tmux. As to why I use Adblock, I've never. Not once. Ever. Bought anything from an ad on a website. I _have_ bought books and such from the referral links on blogs (which adblock doesn't block). The reason I use adblock is because I'm not the demographic ads on websites are targeting. So websites aren't losing any revenue by me not seeing their ads.
      - adamrt 11y ago
        That's now how ads always work. Many sites get revenue based on impressions, not clicks or conversions.
      - PeterUstinox 11y ago
        Of course they lose revenue. your view is like any other. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_impression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_impression) you won't be taking money from the company, which started the ad campaign. also: don't underestimate the effects on brand value, which will come subconsciously, if you look at ads. You will know certain companies are still active etc. This is why you don't necessarily need to be targeted. simply informed. The "sometimes" you talk about should just be with ads on. it won't hurt much, because it's just sometimes.
        brodney 11y ago
        > don't underestimate the effects on brand value, which will come subconsciously, if you look at ads. This is exactly why I use adblock.
        jkyle 11y ago
        Only if you view CPI in isolation as money from the sky. Marketers estimate the CPI they're willing to pay based on estimated conversions per impression. Ultimately, the money comes from sales. It always comes from sales. If I don't ever purchase anything from a website ad, my impressions are worth zero. My impressions, and impressions by those like me, will drive down the price a company is willing to pay per impression since the conversion ratio also goes down. In fact, my impressions incur a negative effect since it still incurs a cost to the advertiser. In the best of all possible worlds, only those who will ultimately buy a product are displayed the ad. Resulting in a 100% conversion ratio. Each impression would be maximally valuable and the price paid for that impression would rise to reflect that. Those of us who use adblock have removed ourself from the market and from the conversion ratio calculations and cost per impression to the advertiser.
        threatofrain 11y ago
        They might lose revenue at first, but in a way that is entirely healthy for a larger system of advertisers and clients, in that both advertiser and client reassess the effectiveness of an instrument (an ad network or product), and thus reassess the correctness of a price for an advertising opportunity. Maybe I'm apathetic to these arguments because I'm quite comfortable paying for content and services, and I'm comfortable with a version of the web where a paying class gets to have paying-class products. If the public feels there should be a free thing, then let it be funded by taxes.
    - exarch 11y ago
      >Because it's how 99% of websites get their funding, allowing them to survive. So then, I'll unblock ads to help companies survive just as soon as those companies start giving me money to help me survive.
      - timdierks 11y ago
        If you don't value what the website is giving you, why are you visiting it?
        phzn 11y ago
        Curious, if I visit the site in question using lynx/links am I still in the wrong?
        mburns 11y ago
        At least with lynx/links, you don't get any javascript functionality and the experience as a whole is diminished. With an ad blocker, you selectively block the javascript you don't like but that the operators rely on to bring in revenue, while still getting the otherwise 'full' experience.
        Crito 11y ago
        If sourceforge went under, do you think I'd be unable to get the source to tmux? Since obviously I'd still be able to get tmux, what value is sourceforge actually providing me? They might be providing tmux developers some value, but they aren't providing any value to me.
        homulilly 11y ago
        I value what these sites are giving me, but not enough to put up with ads. If adblock didn't exist I'd probably visit places like sf or youtube a lot less.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      Because the venn diagram of "obnoxious adverts" and "adverts" is nearly a perfect circle.
    - endgame 11y ago
      Advertisers had their chance to not suck, but they blew it. Sorry.
  - bshimmin 11y ago
    If you're developing anything for the web that might involve advertising, and even certain things that don't, it makes it hard to test, especially if you continually forget to disable your ad blocker. (I'm only being marginally facetious; I worked with a developer who refused to accept that his ad blocker prevented him from seeing issues with Omniture - now Site Catalyst - eating mouse clicks.)
  - wodenokoto 11y ago
    That is actually a rather unreasonable question. It's like telling Firefox users to install chrome. Or that ponzu schemes are okay as long as you yourself don't have to deal with them.
    - apricot 11y ago
      A ponzu scheme is a fraudulent investment operation where the operator pays returns to its investors from citrus-flavoured soy sauce sent to the operators by new investors.
  - recursive 11y ago
    Because I don't want my user agent to be modifying documents I'm requesting.
djeikyb 11y ago
If you try to curl that "direct" link, you'll find it isn't.

treve 11y ago

Not having to move is a major plus.

kkthegamer 11y ago

SourceForge itself is free software. I think that's one possible reason to use it rather than GitHub or else. The other possible is that SourceForge provide mailing list server and other service for projects. Anyway, you won't move a project around unless you have some strong motivations.

olalonde 11y ago
Is SourceForge really open source? Guess I must have missed that news. Regardless, Gitlab would still be a better choice in terms of UX and is also open source.
- tobias2014 11y ago
  Yes it is. http://sourceforge.net/create/ http://sourceforge.net/create/ (see also https://allura.apache.org/ https://allura.apache.org/)
- e12e 11y ago
  It has been released as Apache Allura, Wikipedia has a nice overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Allura http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Allura Install docs: https://forge-allura.apache.org/docs/getting_started/installation.html https://forge-allura.apache.org/docs/getting_started/install... I agree that sourceforge.net as a service might not be my favourite, but Allura the forge-software seems pretty good. I think the only thing that comes close is the stack from Canonical -- but Allura seems more viable to self-host (and scale up when needed -- rather than "only a vm" or "full cluster"). It also seems less "overly opinionated", and still includes sensible defaults (contrast with getting up and running with Trac). YMMV, but it doesn't look half-bad. Right now I don't need anything more than what you can easily get with either a separate wiki+mercurial+mailing-list, "just" trac or fossil -- but for something in-between "too big to host internally" and "too complex for Trac to be easy" -- it looks rather interesting. I'd love to hear any war stories.
- shmerl 11y ago
  Do you know if Gitlab allows attachments in bugs and comments? It's one of the major deficiencies in Github.

xienze 11y ago

> What is the advantage of using Sourceforge these days when github and bitbucket are free for open source? I imagine the author figures that moving is a pain. Don't forget, Sourceforge was the Github of yesteryear. I imagine in 10 years we may very well be asking the same of some old project hosted on Github.

StefanKarpinski 11y ago
Sourceforge's downfall was not finding a better business model than advertising – which has devolved into the worst kind of spammy ads. GitHub, on the other hand, has a solid business model that doesn't involve advertising. In fact, putting ads on the site would be suicide.
- xienze 11y ago
  Sure, but you can't say with certainty that Github's fortunes won't change X years down the line is my point.
  - thramp 11y ago
    That’s true, but the risks are significantly diminished. As they say, your business model is your destiny, and if have a good business model...
- imroot 11y ago
  Sourceforge tried to find a better business model -- sourceforge enterprise edition -- but then spun it off and then sold it to a different company (CollabNet) in 2007...then over the next 3-5 years, laid off almost everyone behind sourceforge.net/OSDN. The only thing left of the company now is thinkgeek.
vog 11y ago
> Don't forget, Sourceforge was the Github of yesteryear. Not really. At that time, there were almost no alternatives. Sourceforge was slow and bloated, even without ads. Nobody wanted to use it, but at least it was free (in the sense of free beer). And it took them ages to support SVN in addition to CVS. When they finally supported it, many project were already thinking about switching from SVN to a distributed VCS.

qrmn 11y ago

I'm also struggling to see any advantages to still using Sourceforge in 2015. Firstly, they're well-known by now to be complicit in sponsored 'wrapper' installers bundling some pretty awful stuff - check out what they did with FileZilla - which is an even more intrusive advertising practice than that. Secondly, they host a lot of executable code (and don't forget build scripts in source code, unless you check your Makefiles!), but they still don't use TLS, and don't even seem to have any plans to - which is by now negligent practice, I think, considering the widespread public knowledge of Hacking Team's (and GCHQ's) at-scale deployments of network-level file infectors.

Qwertious 11y ago

Github isn't completely open-source. Source: http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source-everything.html http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source-everyth...

perlgeek 11y ago

Even before github was around, sourceforge was a PITA. I remember clicking through the web UI for more than half an hour before finding the place where you could configure the project website/homepage. Also, trying to delete an abandoned project, which had a mailing list, but it wouldn't let me delete the mailing list, because there was still an admin in there (me!), and I couldn't leave the mailing list, because then it would have been without admin. D'uh. And you couldn't delete a project with an active mailing list... Then a few years later, after I didn't use SF much anymore, I tried to comment on the bug in the bug tracker, and didn't find any option to do that, even as a logged-in user. I used google code as soon as it became available, because it worked, and had a much cleaner admin interface. Not to mention user interface.

jlarocco 11y ago

Ditto. I more or less refuse to use Sourceforge. There's an up to date clone on GitHub at https://github.com/ThomasAdam/tmux https://github.com/ThomasAdam/tmux Can't send patches to it, but it's great if you're just building it.

thomasadam 11y ago
That's right, you can't send me patches as they're to be sent to the tmux mailing list. Is this not made clear already in the repository description?
- jsalit 11y ago
  I don't think GP was criticizing, just making a note of it.

vog 11y ago

Or, they could go one step further and do it like WinSCP. That is, WinSCP has an own website that contains ads with fake download buttons. It's really nasty, but at least the advertisement payments go directly to the project, rather than just to the hosting service.

mrmondo 11y ago

I was thinking exactly this, I just logged a bug for them to move the project: https://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/tickets/192/ https://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/tickets/192/

tslocum 11y ago
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand it's closed. Without comment.
- nchammas 11y ago
  Searching the tmux mailing list [0], it looks like there were some recent discussions about migrating to GitHub. Basically, it looks like the developers don't see any benefit to migrating that outweighs the cost of a migration. [1] There is a GitHub mirror [2] maintained by, I think, one of the developers, but they don't accept pull requests. It's interesting to note that, for such a popular project like tmux, there are so few contributors. [3] Five, to be exact. Maybe that's an artifact of how the mirroring to GitHub works (perhaps the commit authors aren't translated correctly?), but I suspect it's more an artifact of an outdated contribution process and tooling. [0] http://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/mailman/search/?q=github http://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/mailman/search/?q=github [1] http://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/mailman/message/33826395/ http://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/mailman/message/33826395/ [2] https://github.com/ThomasAdam/tmux https://github.com/ThomasAdam/tmux [3] https://github.com/ThomasAdam/tmux/graphs/contributors https://github.com/ThomasAdam/tmux/graphs/contributors
  - nicm 11y ago
    lots of people have contributed to tmux (on a quick grep through the logs, probably ~25 have made significant or multiple contributions, ~170 have made small contributions)
    - nchammas 11y ago
      Hi Nicholas! That's good to hear, and definitely makes more sense given how popular and old tmux is as a project. So I guess something just didn't translate correctly to Thomas's GitHub mirror.

glesica 11y ago

Does anyone who would be downloading tmux not use an ad blocker? Because if so, consider me shocked. I mean, not that the ads aren't still a moral concern, but from a practical standpoint it doesn't seem like a big deal. I didn't even realize Sourceforge still had ads...

jodooshi 11y ago

Perhaps no advantage, but it's a good thing. As in the CPU market, there are Intel, AMD, even another architecture alternatives, eg. ARM. It's just an analogy. :-)