SourceForge Drifting

Zocalo sent us a story running at FSF Europe talking about SourceForge's Drifting. Talks about the fact that they are releasing a closed-source version of the code commercially and various copyright related things. Obviously VA owns both SF and Slashdot so I'm skewed, but my personal opinion is that VA is doing what they need to do to make a buck while still providing the SourceForge.net website to the Open Source community. And I think their decision to sell a closed-source proprietary version of the code would be hypocritical, except that they aren't a 100% open-source company any more. And *that* is the part that makes me the most sad.

Comments

Sad? No. It was simply inevitable.

[dave-fu]

Yes, open source as a hobbyist development model can and will persist long into the future, and I'm sure that there will be fun and exciting products as a result of it.
That said, now that the heady, greedy days of the dot com boom are long behind us, it's high time to re-evaluate the position. Money isn't growing on trees and being plucked from the asses of VCs star-struck by that beautiful three-letter phrase (IPO, IPO, IPO!) so much that they can overlook that little thing called "a business plan."
Internet advertising is the redheaded stepchild of the marketing family. Old media ads have no need to justify themselves with inanities like "click-through"; they know their demographic and their real estate is mindshare, that precious commodity which they assume that they're purchasing with their ad dollars, regardless of whether or not this purchase translates into a product purchase immediately or down the road. The internet is a fickle bastard: people gravitate towards the warez model of "buy none, get one free" and so there's the propensity towards stealing everything we can. To wit: the inevitable linking to archives.nytimes.com anytime they've got an article up because registration is such a chore, but if you were to ask the average Slashdotter how they feel about someone using "their" resources without registration (think Anonymous Cowards here), one would instead getsthe impression that merely providing a name and e-mail address is as simple as could be. Hmm. To wit: proxies, ad-killing bots and specialized hosts files that insure that our precious bandwidth isn't eaten up by ancillary ads that might keep the sites afloat, but then again if we don't click on them and buy something might not even if we do see them. Hmm.
Ah, open source. Communism reborn, and who can hate that? Not the watered down Leninism that the Soviet Union ran through in short order, but honest-to-goodness communism. Take what you need, give what you have. Beautiful. A touching sentiment.
Also impossible to be a commercially viable entity when human nature comes into play. If we can get our content ad-free we will, even though it means economic hardship and possibly the closing of the sites we visit and love (or love to hate, as the case may be) and if we can get our software cost-free, without the dirty stigma of clicking through porno banners to find the 3rd word of the 4th paragraph to get entry to L33t b0b'5 h0u53 0f w4r3z, all the better. I whip up a weekend project that is derivative but I'm proud of and off to Freshmeat with you! Maybe even Sourceforge! Take it! Share it!
I'll pour a few hundred hours of blood, sweat and tears into it! Shiny new! Everyone wants it! It's hot!
But how do I parlay it into a commercial venture when everyone can get it for free and fix it up as they want? Hmm.
Open source is a lovely idea with lofty goals, and as long as talented, motivated, intelligent programmers buy into it, it will generate impressive results. Unfortunately, there's a very finite number of talented, motivated, intelligent, ascetic programmers out there who will buy into it.
OSDN's changing business strategies faster than you can say "we're a B2B play now!" (read: brushed up that resume yet?). If bigger ads or a subscription service to a website who doesn't give a whit about the quality of its journalism and doesn't know the meaning of the word "editing", relying on constantly inflammatory agitprop to woo its readership are the order of the day, then I'll just stick with Ars Technica, The Register and memepool (topical, informative, and normally journalistically objective sites), thanks. Slashdot's been a fun little ride, and like many other things, peer moderation was a sexy little idea, just unfortunate in that it pretty much disintegrated into ugly mob rule groupthink. Scene, not herd.