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Alternatives To SourceForge For Open Sourced Projects?
Bowie J. Poag asks: "I'd like to start another project, but I don't want my work hosted on SourceForge due to security concerns. Specifically, I'm looking for someplace I can develop ideas with a small team of people in complete privacy without having details of our development process on display to the general public. Are there other project hosting services available to the community?"
I have a few comments, some on topic, some off-topic. Hopefully more on than off.
1. They call it co-location, or a dedicated server. I hope you didn't think it would be free?
2. What security concerns do you have with SourceForge exactly? (see next comment...)
3. I find it interesting this question was posted, comming from Bowie. We all know he had a big falling out with VA (Sourceforge is run by VA) and also we know he is bitter. (that whole tiles thing) I don't see why he had to include the poke at Sourceforge, from what I can tell, they are doing a great service to the community.
4. Did you try Area 51? That is Andover's dealie. See how private they are, though I think they are the same as SourceForge.
5. Xnot also runs a code thing that is less popular and can probably be made secure (maybe it would seperate them from the rest of the "code-houses" crowd.
Reading over my post, I think there is more on topic than off, hopefully Bowie will respond to a few of my points though...perhaps even in a polite way.
-Davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
Hi folks..time to address a few questions.
:) Does such a place exist?
My concern rests mainly with the need to have a large array of resources available to developers, while still preserving some degree of "radio silence" while the development process occurs. Some things (even some projects) obviously benefit from having a worldwide audience that can propose solutions or correct problems. However, there are some things, ideas mainly, which need a degree of secrecy in order to grow to maturity.
While SourceForge does offer the resource end of the equation, having your project on SourceForge is admittedly anything but low-profile. For some of us, this is a problem. This is also what I meant by "security concerns", by the way. I'm sure VA does a good job of handling machine security (they did while I was working with them at least), but thats not what I'm referring to here. I'm talking about security within an individual project, hosted by a larger entity.
If we want to dig up System 12 as an example, consider this: We had something on the order of 15,000 people sniffing around and speculating on what we were doing before we even had anything tangible to share. We watched the logs daily, and parsed them for unusual referrals..Some of them pointing directly back to people within large orginazations we had no dealings with at all. We thought it was amusing at the time, but personally, I didn't like the idea that we were being periodically watched by different companies.
(Admittedly, we did place some little pieces of eye-candy out for public view, but I'll take the blame for that mistake. If I could go back and do it all differently, I would have kept the lid on that project air-tight.. Only myself, and the people working on it would know, until we were ready.)
Anyway, nuff about S12. Onto the problem at hand:
By saying "We don't wany anyone to know or hear about what we're doing until its done" isn't illegal, nor is it morally wrong or at odds with the spirit of the GPL. So long as in the end, when the final product is complete and the source for it has been made available to the public, everything's fine.
Im just wondering if such a place exists. A tall order, sure, a big box with a wide pipe, and total secrecy for a dozen people for a finite period of time. But thats why I wrote Ask Slashdot in the first place.
(PS.. Yes, I dont like VA. Thats obvious. However, im not going to edge my bias into the discussion lets keep the conversation constructive here.)
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag