Google Announces Open Source Repository

NewsForge (also owned by OSTG) has word of Google's newest product: an open-source project repository. Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier sat down for a talk with Greg Stein and Chris DiBona, who say that the product is very similar to sites like SourceForge but is not intended to compete with them. From the article: "Instead, Stein says that the goal is to see what Google can do with the Google infrastructure, to provide an alternative for open source projects. DiBona says that it's a 'direct result of Greg concentrating on what open source projects need. Most bugtrackers are informed by what corporations' and large projects need, whereas Google's offering is just about what open source developers need. Stein says that Google's hosting has a 'brand new look' at issue tracking that may be of interest to open source projects, and says 'nobody else out there is doing anything close to it.'"

Comments

SourceForge is easy to beat

[telbij]

Whether or not they claim to be competing with SourceForge is really beside the point. SourceForge puts all its effort into providing service for its Enterprise customers. Or at least that's my interpretation of why their free services have been plagued with extensive downtime and poor administration. When I did the first release of a personal project last year I didn't even bother to put it on SourceForge. If they can't provide reasonable uptime and notification of changes (such as the infamous CVS root change) then it's worse than nothing.

If Google provides decent uptime--which seems likely given their infrastructure--then they'll already have SourceForge beat on the most important metric. If the service actually innovates and provides some unique value, well that's just a bonus.

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[SoCalChris]

Speaking of beating things, they must be marketing to the teenage/early 20's male programmer.

Have you seen their slogan?

Release early, release often

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[sgt scrub]

If SourceForge had Google's resources they wouldn't have those problems. if the percentage of people taking advantage of opensource software and sites like SourceForge would give something back they would have those resources. I would rather of seen Google contribute to SourceForge, or Freshmeat for that matter.

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[larry bagina]

would you rather of [sic] seen Google contribute to hotmail or yahoo mail rather than creating gmail? Or maybe they should have contributed to yahoo, msn, or altavista instead of creating their own search engine?

I investigated using the enterprise version of sourceforge about a year ago. We looked at the source code (from before they closed it) and decided it was a horrible mess and poorly designed. They may have cleaned it up after they closed it, but I wasn't impressed.

If google can do something better, they should.

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[cheater512]

But we do contribute back to Sourceforge. Thats what all the ads are for.

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[Excelsior]

As a non-project-admin user of SF, my biggest problem with SF was the period of time when their search failed to work 95% of the time due to overload. I'm willing to bet Google Code never has that problem. I could be wrong.

On a different topic, for all the times that people complain that Slashdot is posting topics that are in their best interest, topics like this show me this isn't the case. Since OSTG owns both Sourceforge and Slashdot, this posting goes against their financial best interest. They have exposed their huge audience to a competitor.

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[suds]

Release early, release often

Yes, I say give credit where credit is due..in this case should credit Linus for the quote.

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[A Brand of Fire]

Sounds like those young'uns need to learn Tantric programming.

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[Anonymous Coward]

"topics like this show me this isn't the case."

Oh, a news website posted a news story this time, which is what they're *supposed* to do anyway. Airtight logic. While we're at it, let's prove all rats are white because we found one white rat.

Far as I'm concerned, Google should be taking over Sourceforge completely. Open Source projects have chilled too long in the dark shadow of the proprietary-loving Slashdot empire. "But how can you SAY that?" While pointing to the revenue from the Microsoft ads, is how.

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[jamie]

Proprietary-loving? OK, just for the record, of Google Code Hosting and Slash, which is open-source? :)

(That is so not fair of me. Google would probably love to open-source Hosting, but, as described in the session a little while ago, in order to make it as tightly integrated with Bigtable and search and mail and everything, they really can't release it without releasing a ton of their core proprietary code too. Which obviously they can't.)

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[Chorizo]

The enterprise version was rewritten from scratch in Java about 4 years ago. You can get a 15 user VMWare image version of it for free here: http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/sfee/

Just a clarification, since it doesn't address your core issue, as sf.net doesn't use the enterprise code.

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you drunk when you posted that? Just curious...

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[massysett]

And why would people "contribute" to SourceForge, a for-profit enterprise?

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[Eivind Eklund]

This seems reasonable at first glance, yet it indicates a misunderstanding of how projects work. Projects have momentum and culture. It actually often is a better idea to build things from scratch - adding resources to a project far from always improves it.

In "The mythical man month", Fred Brooks simplified it as "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."

Eivind.

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[Aquila Deus]

How can you be sure Google's wouldn't have the same problems when it gets load as heavy as SourceForge's? Besides they may not want to handle it even if they could.

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[njh]

It's be nice if google followed their own advice.

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[BRSloth]

Release early, release often

Yes, I say give credit where credit is due..in this case should credit Linus for the quote

Actually, it was Eric Raymond. One of the few smart things he said.

Re:SourceForge is easy to beat

[andrewman327]

I hope that this really takes off. They can challenge Sourceforge and will probably provide a better service overall. The problem is that so many people are devoted to Sourceforge. Do you think the user base overall is angry enough to make the switch?

SourceForge, we hardly knew ye

[TopShelf]

...who say that the product is very similar to sites like SourceForge but is not intended to compete with them.

I guess they mean that in the sense that the Pittsburgh Steelers aren't intended to compete with an intramural squad playing in a park. Shall we start the SourceForge countdown clock?

Re:SourceForge, we hardly knew ye

[yakhan451]

I think a betting pool would be more fun.

Re:SourceForge, we hardly knew ye

[colmore]

Seeing as I had gone for the long shot and picked "July 2006" on Lance Bass, this could really be my month!

Re:SourceForge, we hardly knew ye

[kfg]

Not even vaguely in the same market. The Pittsburgh Steelers are a commercial entertainment venture, the intramural squad in the park is a sport.

KFG

Re:SourceForge, we hardly knew ye

[Mulielo]

That intramural squad will still be playing in the park next week, and the week after, and the week after that...

Re:SourceForge, we hardly knew ye

[eln]

Okay, try the analogy with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Oakland Raiders. Works just as well.

Re:SourceForge, we hardly knew ye

[kfg]

. . .try the analogy with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Oakland Raiders.

Pittsburgh Steelers: Commercial entertainment venture

Oakland Raiders: Money blown on a joke

Ok, we've achieved equivilence.

KFG

Re:SourceForge, we hardly knew ye

[Lord Flipper]

Pittsburgh Steelers: Commercial entertainment venture

Oakland Raiders: Money blown on a joke

Ok, we've achieved equivilence.

KFG

When Al Davis took over the Raiders in 1963, they were coming off three terrible seasons in a row (9-33-0), from their inception. They went 10-4 in '63, and over the next 30 years became tyhe winningest (in terms of games won/games played in ANY pro sport, ever. That sound like a 'joke' to you?

They are the only team to play in the Super Bowl in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Pretty funny joke, eh?

Al Davis may or may not be a genius, but I'll bet any amount of money on this:
He does a shitload of better fact-checking than you do. Ha ha ha, now I get it.. the 'joke' I mean. Over to you, clueless...

Re:SourceForge, we hardly knew ye

[kfg]

Al Davis may or may not be a genius, but I'll bet any amount of money on this:
He does a shitload of better fact-checking than you do.

Who's Al Davis?

KFG

Re:SourceForge, we hardly knew ye

[Lord Flipper]

Al Davis may or may not be a genius, but I'll bet any amount of money on this:
He does a shitload of better fact-checking than you do.

Who's Al Davis?

KFG

Ha ha ha. You are really a Raiders expert over there, eh? Nice, you blow it out your mouthhole, talking about the Raiders with zero understanding of any of their history, and for what? To make some sarcastic, unsupportable witticism (only in your own mind, of course), then you turn around and prove you have no clue about what you think your misinformed opinion supposedly referred to.

Use Google, I'm not your fucking encyclopedia. And check your facts a little before you try to come off like you have any idea what the fuck you think you're talking about.

Mmhmm, another swing and a miss...0 and 2 to you, pal.

Re:SourceForge, we hardly knew ye

[Anonymous Coward]

Raiders expert? Why would anyone want to be a Raiders expert? What, did you discover computers when your knee blew out and you couldn't walk to the sofa to throw back some cheap beer with your friends? Ha ha ha, you've failed it.

Re:SourceForge, we hardly knew ye

[Smallpond]

IX, X, XII, XIV, LX - an exercise in Roman numerals.

More words missing from the original post

[jimbogun]

"very similar to sites like SourceForge but is not intended to compete with them" ****Missing from the original post**** ", but is intended to replace them." Why compete when you can crush?

No Public Domain

[Anonymous Coward]

A quick look through the licenses mentioned in the TFA shows that public domain is missing.

Although its not a license per se, it might be nice to add that option for those projects that choose to go that route.

Re:No Public Domain

[euthyphro]

Other notable missing OSI license options: Academic Free License (AFL), Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), Common Public License (CPL), and Eclipse Public License. It would be nice to hear the selection criteria used and how those criteria combat license proliferation, as well as how holding this position matters to Google.

Re:No Public Domain

[rollercoaster375]

Also missing is the option for Dual Licensing of your application. GPL and MIT (with a fee), for example.

Re:No Public Domain

[Zarel]

Yeah. I was considering using it for one of my projects until I realized it didn't have Public Domain.

I don't want copyright law anywhere near my projects, ya hear me, Google?

Re:No Public Domain

[Bull_UK]

No NOSA either, no surprise there though.

Re:No Public Domain

[rucs_hack]

You automatically have copyright unless you specify otherwise.

Public domain isn't the same as open source, open source means the developers retain rights, public domain means you give them all up, public domain can be taken by a stranger and made proprietary, is that really what you want? I suggest you have a little think on that issue.

Google isn't specifically addressing that issue yet, just open source. Perhaps you should submit a request to have public domain added, it is after all only in the initial stages.

Re:No Public Domain

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK public domain has diffren meanings in diffrent jurisdictions and in some not a well defined meaning or non at all. And how could someone later on verify that it really is public domain and what you ment by that without the provision to identify you as the author? Consider using the MIT licence it basically says you can do what you want (the "without restriction", the "including" is just examples to show that you really know and mean it) but identify me as the author and you can't sue me, it's a bit wordy but it's probably as short as it gets using legalese.

Re:No Public Domain

[Goaway]

Public domain isn't the same as open source, open source means the developers retain rights, public domain means you give them all up, public domain can be taken by a stranger and made proprietary, is that really what you want? I suggest you have a little think on that issue.

I'm not the poster you were replying to, but yes, that is exactly what I want when I release my software as public domain. I do not envy others their success if they want to use my code. No matter how propietary their use of it is, that does not lessen the value of the existing code one bit, and only reflects positively on myself.

SQLite is a project that is released completely free into the public domain, and it has been massively successful, and has been taken up in any number of both open source and propietary projects. It's even running in the internals of Mac OS X. This would not have happened if it was encumbered by a GPL license.

Re:No Public Domain

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's what I want. It's called freedom.

Though I'm a hypocrite too, as I consider the BSD license to be "free enough".

Re:No Public Domain

[rucs_hack]

"No matter how propietary their use of it is, that does not lessen the value of the existing code one bit, and only reflects positively on myself."

It doesn't reflect on you at all, they can strip your name from the code, there is no obligation to credit you. They might not do this, but they can, and most will (human nature does lean this way as a rule).

Yes, some large projects are public domain, that's their choice. In the case you cite, SQLlite, the project is so large that people would likely notice a complete copy that was proprietary anyway, bringing discredit to any firm claiming to have developed it in house. The other important aspect is that it is a collaborative work, the people involved will almost certainly have personal work as well. It's different if it's all your own code being taken and locked away.

I'd never use public domain, although I allow my code to be extensivelly used by others (ports and derivatives take up a lot of my time, I enjoy the collaboration). I would take issue with people claiming my work as their own (in some cases it represents years of hard work on my part, and I definatelly want credit along with my existing academic priority through publications related to the work), but I have no problem whatso-ever with people supplanting my code with better implementations.

Ok, I don't like public domain much, I'll admit that, but if you want to use it that's your choice, I can do nought but say it's entirely up to you what you do with your own code.

Re:No Public Domain

[Zarel]

You automatically have copyright unless you specify otherwise.

Exactly why I'm specifying public domain.

public domain means you give them all up, public domain can be taken by a stranger and made proprietary, is that really what you want?

Yes. That's why I want public domain. I don't want some stranger to go, "Okay, this is open-source. Um... is it legal for me to do this? How about this? Will I get sued if I do this?" That goes against the spirit of Free Software.

Re:No Public Domain

[Zarel]

It doesn't reflect on you at all, they can strip your name from the code, there is no obligation to credit you. They might not do this, but they can, and most will (human nature does lean this way as a rule).

Few people actually read the credits of a particular piece of software, anyway. It's well worth the extra publicity you get by releasing a project under public domain than to be removed from the credits of a particular piece of software written by people who don't like you.

I would take issue with people claiming my work as their own

So would I, but if I had enough evidence to successfully sue them for claiming my works as theirs, I could just as easily ridicule them for trying to pass off my work as theirs. And it'd be that much more of a PR disaster for them. That's a very low price to pay for freedom.

Re:No Public Domain

[Anonymous Coward]

Also missing is the option for Dual Licensing of your application. GPL and MIT (with a fee), for example.

How about people stop coming up with so many open source licenses and concentrate on actually writing decent code that gets past the 0.1 alpha stage? 90% of the projects on Sourceforge seem like they're in the very earliest stages of development or they're completely stalled. If you want it to be completely free, use the BSD license, if you want it to be free as in hippies then use the GPL, if you want some other license then what the fuck are you doing using some free repository you shmuck. Go setup a CVS repository of your own and close your source.

Re:No Public Domain

[Anonymous Coward]

If you released your code into the public domain, you'd have very little luck even ridiculing for someone else passing it off as their own.
You've explicitly allowed them to do anything with it, including passing it off as their own.

You could yell from the highest mountain about how they were using your code, and they'd just say "Yes, we know. It was in the public domain, so we used it" There'd be no PR disaster because they hadn't done anything wrong.

Re:No Public Domain

[CarpetShark]

I'm not sure, but I think dual licensing wouldn't matter. If you're posting your code with an Copyleft license on a site like this, then it's the Free license you're dealing with there. There might be an identical version of the code out there under a different license, or at a different site, but that's no different from selling a bespoke product to different people with different features.

Re:No Public Domain

[hritcu]

Maybe the number of licenses will increase with time ... to include at least the ones you mentioned. Did you report the "bug" ? :)

Re:No Public Domain

[rucs_hack]

"Um... is it legal for me to do this? How about this? Will I get sued if I do this?" That goes against the spirit of Free Software."

No sir, that is in fact *exactly* the point of open source/free software. It aloows freedom whilst restricting freeloaders from just taking whatever they want and pretending it's their own.

They could ask for take open source proprietary, copyright holders have the right to change licences at any point.

Re:No Public Domain

[ae]

Placing your software in the public domain is not as easy as you might think. See this article by Larry Rosen in Linux Journal for instance: Why the Public Domain Isn't a License.

Re:No Public Domain

[Zarel]

If you released your code into the public domain, you'd have very little luck even ridiculing for someone else passing it off as their own.
You've explicitly allowed them to do anything with it, including passing it off as their own.

Plagiarism is legal, too, yet journalists still get fired for doing it. Over here on Earth, we have a concept called "morality". If a company does something legal but immoral, it'll still be a PR disaster. I doubt customers are going to buy "Hey, it's perfectly fine for us to lie about what we wrote. I mean, it's legal; it's public domain! You can't hate us for that!"

Re:No Public Domain

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure, but I think dual licensing wouldn't matter. If you're posting your code with an Copyleft license on a site like this, then it's the Free license you're dealing with there. There might be an identical version of the code out there under a different license, or at a different site, but that's no different from selling a bespoke product to different people with different features.

Provided you're the sole author.

If your code is dual-licensed on sourceforge than anyone else who contributes to the project signs up to your dual license. If your code is GPL on one site and MIT elsewhere then you don't have any right to copy third-party contributions submitted to the GPL version across to the MIT version.

Re:No Public Domain

[Xabraxas]

I doubt customers are going to buy "Hey, it's perfectly fine for us to lie about what we wrote. I mean, it's legal; it's public domain! You can't hate us for that!"

Isn't that what PR departments and the government do all the time? Hell the governement even lies to us about what is legal or illegal and people still buy it.

Re:No Public Domain

[HansF]

Just FYI but that doesn't work that way all over the world.
In belgium for example you will allways remain the copyright holder until the copyright expires (a while afther your death). In other words: you simply can't put your own creations in the public domain.
That's why licences are important: you need a legal base for distributing your work.

Re:No Public Domain

[Goaway]

It doesn't reflect on you at all, they can strip your name from the code, there is no obligation to credit you. They might not do this, but they can, and most will (human nature does lean this way as a rule).

How do you get from "somebody could theoretically take my code and claim it as their own" to "it does not reflect on me at all"? The first scenario is very unlikely to ever happen, and even if it does, it still doesn't affect me negatively in any way. As others pointed out, I could amuse myself by heckling whoever did it, or I could just ignore them, but in neither case are there any negative consequences for me. It is only if you contrive to let your pride be hurt that there is any problem, and I see no reason to do that.

And once again, the vast majority of people would credit me just as much as they would with a GPL license or what have you. And that would include those who would not use my code in the first place if it was GPL'd.

Re:No Public Domain

[julesh]

You automatically have copyright unless you specify otherwise.

Actually, that's not true. In Berne Convention signatory countries (i.e. most of the civilised world) you automatically have copyright. Specifying otherwise doesn't change a thing: you have copyright.

Your only option for allowing anyone to use your copyright work is to grant a public license to anyone who will take it that includes irrevocable rights to use the work in any way, including sublicensing. While this is what most people mean when they say "public domain" in this context, it is worth noting that it isn't public domain in the legal sense of the word.

Re:No Public Domain

[CarpetShark]

Ahh, I missed that. Thanks for pointing it out :)

Bzzzzttt

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree.

SourceForge is one of the best, most reliable hosts, open source or not, that the FOSS community has ever seen. The tools for administration are top notch, and the userbase clearly loves the interfaces.

Just like that viral ad says "head on, apply directly to the forehead", SourceForge is more along the lines of "my cock, apply directly to your anus. My cock, apply directly to your anus."

But that's just my take on things. YMMV.

What the catch?

[__aaclcg7560]

Can we use this Open Source Repository without something in the source code calling home like some of Google's APIs are in habit of doing?

Re:What the catch?

[swimmar132]

I have no idea what you're talking about. Are you saying that Google is going to insert code into your C++ open source project that talks to a Google server?

If so, I'd like some of that crack please.

Re:What the catch?

[__aaclcg7560]

Apparently, if you use some of the Google APIs, part of the code calls home to let it be known that it's being used. That's what my crack pot... I mean, Slasdhot... tells me a while back. Would Google insert their code into an Open Source project? Inquiring crack heads want to know.

Re:What the catch?

[AuMatar]

The calling home on a lot of their APIs is to throttle usage- if someone is getting huge traffic google may want to react to that by either lowering their requests, caching more data for them, or even buying them if its truely huge. Thats what google maps does, for instance.

Re:What the catch?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the problem with inquiring crack heads. They think they're so inquiring, but really they're so coked up that they're actually staring at the wall in a blank haze. And then when ET tries to phone home from their app, it doesn't even occur to them to check its Open Fucking Source to see if Google insertified any code into their project.

Re:What the catch?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one thing to phone home in your own code, quite another to modify someone else's code to do it.

You're obviously not a programmer, because it's something that's impossible to do reliably, insanely difficult to do unreliably, and would piss off every developer who uses the service (and they would see the inserted functionality almost immediately).

Re:What the catch?

[__aaclcg7560]

You mean PHP programming doesn't count for anything? :P

What a pity

[Rorian]

I was really hoping for something more exciting from google, when they announced that they'd be producing something for the open source community. Sourceforge has the occasional problem (CVS stats has been broken for how long now?), but basically it a fantastic site for open source, and easily provides all the services that any OSS project of any size needs in order to function and flourish.

I know google has done amazing things with stuff like webmail (gmail DESTROYS any previous webmail I have used in terms of features/functionality/speed/storage space, so much so that I haven't tried another since and doubt I ever will - if google decided to charge $10 a month for the gmail service I'd pay it in a heartbeat - it's that good :)). However, I just cannot see that they can bring any miraculous innovation to the table as far as hosting/supporting OSS projects goes - between forums, IRC and email, collaboration over OSS projects is already working perfectly and as I see it, that is all that google could help with - they can't really step in and do the actual development work required to create every Open source project out there.

Still, I'm sure it will be all AJAXy and perdy, maybe faster than sf.net and maybe I'll even choose them over sf.net the next time I can be bothered starting an OSS project.

Re:What a pity

[B3ryllium]

Broken CVS speeds adoption of Subversion :) I switched to SVN from CVS on my sf.net project on the weekend, and it's been working beautifully so far.

Re:What a pity

[gregmac]

4 days and it works great, huh? :)

Seriously though, subversion has been pretty good for the most part. A project I'm involved in has been using it pretty much since it became available. I've never liked the bug tracker though, and especially some of their other tools, like the forum. We've actually been using Trac now for, a long time, which syncs to the sf.net svn server. sf.net hosts our mailing list, downloads, and code.. and we have a wiki (and documentation) and ticket tracker with Trac (along with code browser, timeline, and roadmap).

Re:What a pity

[B3ryllium]

Well, it's actually the combination of Eclipse/Subclipse/PHPclipse that works great :) I hadn't coded on my project for nearly six months prior to switching, and it's made it much easier for me to get started on a coding session ... it's a big improvement over my old environment that I was using. Less clicking around. :)

Now I just need some more RAM .... 512 isn't enough for Eclipse. lol :)

Re:What a pity

[Anonymous Coward]

think about the reach of google and think about the reach of sourceforge. probably u got ur answer there :)

Re:What a pity

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a breakdown of the Google Code Project Hosting features at http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/07/28/google-cod e-project-hosting-a-replacement-for-sourceforge/

Re:What a pity

[Eivind Eklund]

OSS projects are not working anywhere near to perfect. They are working somewhat adequately, yet they're very far from perfect. SF.net is even less perfect - when you say [sourceforge] "... easily provides all the services that any OSS project of any size needs in order to function and flourish" - why do most of the large OSS projects (Free/Net/Open/DragonflyBSD, KDE, Gnome, X11, Debian, Gentoo, ...) use separate infrastructure? I can only speak for FreeBSD: We do so because Sourceforge services isn't enough, and we get more done by taking the overhead of running our own.

On to problem areas for open source in general:

• Problem report to patched, committed source with commit comment. The path is LONG - even if you have a checked out tree, you'll need to save the patch, switch windows, cd to an appropriate directory, run a patch command, run a commit command, and write a commit message.
• Ability to integrate automated testing on commit. This is possible, yet it's an utter pain in most version control systems. (Aegis gets it mostly right, of course, as this was the original reason for Aegis).
• Project search is difficult, even including SF.net and Freshmeat and Freshports and pkgsrc and Debian package metadata and CPAN and ...
• The problem report/issue tracking systems I know of are icky to use for large projects. (They're icky for small, too, but there the ickyness doesn't matter much)
• There is no way to mark up code with discussions a la a Wiki.
• There's no easy way to mark up code for high quality UML output, so people can get into projects quickly
• Every project end up setting up their own infrastructure for archiving chat logs
• Mailing list archive search is icky, and this is necessary to find why what happened. (This may, unfortunately, always end up being icky.)
• There's no (perceived as) reliable, scalable version control system that handle distributed branching/development.

I can write up points for hours - and have. Unfortunately, my last try at dealing with many of these issues (http://www.rubyarchive.org, presently so defunct that the Wiki has been spammed almost out of existence) ended up being sabotaged, and I'm sort of demotivated towards doing any more tries...

Eivind.

Re:What a pity

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of three simple things they could do to eliminate sourceforge in the long term:

- Direct downloads. Ads suck. Manually selecting a mirror sucks. Seriously.
- Easy to use tools! Maybe it's just me, but in my opinion SF is worse than emacs as far as the learning curve goes.
- Half decent gui, huge for projects targeted at non-developers. IMHO, this is a major barrier to linux on the desktop.

Re:What a pity

[hacker]

Sourceforge has the occasional problem (CVS stats has been broken for how long now?), but basically it a fantastic site for open source, and easily provides all the services that any OSS project of any size needs in order to function and flourish.

Except for:

1. Broken mailing lists. They've butchered Mailman beyond functionality, by removing the ability to get the project emails in SMTP format, no archive (mbox) downloads to read offline, broken signup and preference retrieval.
2. Broken bug tracking. No email accountability when bugs are updated, no escalation and priority, other issues.
3. Crippled CVS repositories. No branches, no proper deletion of files, no ownership changes of directories, no ACLs. They "crippled" it in the name of security, because they didn't know how to secure it in the first place. Its down more than its up.
4. Controlling hosting policies. If you decide to move your project elsewhere, they outright REFUSE to remove the entry from Sourceforge, because they claim they want to be sure the code is still available to someone. Not only is this confusing, its downright WRONG (morally and ethically). See my own project as an example. I haven't had code up there, ever, in over 6-7 years now, and the project page still lives on, confusing users every day.

But other than that, sure, I agree.

Re:Wait wait

[TedSandwich]

I believe they were referring to

'brand new look' at issue tracking

when they said

'nobody else out there is doing anything close to it.'

, not Open Source hosting.

A Portent Of Things To Come

[Anonymous Coward]

Commercial world comes in and get things right and makes a useful product out of half-assed/clunky but ideology laden open source project.

And the OSI becomes significantly more irrelevant...

Obligatory

[andytrevino]

I, for one, welcome our new overl[b]oooooo[/b]rds.

Re:Obligatory

[andytrevino]

I, for one, welcome our new overl[b]oooooo[/b]rds.

And that, kids, is why we use the 'Preview' button. Durr.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

That's OK, I spend so much time online I render BBCode internally anyway.

Re:Obligatory

[tonyr1988]

I, for one, welcome our new overl[b]oooooo[/b]rds.

Boo bbCode

Hooray beer!

Re:Obligatory

[SolitaryMan]

I, for one, welcome our new overl[b]oooooo[/b]rds.

And that, kids, is why we use the 'Preview' button. Durr.

I like overbooooobs more.

Re:Obligatory

[cerberusss]

HAha, indeed I didn't really think anything wrong about the post until he replied to himself.

Re:Obligatory

[andrewman327]

I parse html internally. I mean real html, my cerebral IDE doesn't understand that funky Microsoft only stuff.

I was going to say that without ads it was nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

...before I noticed what bullshit they slipped in.

I was looking around http://code.google.com/ when I took a look at the "Featured Projects". Pirate Island is a blatent advertisement for Dead Man's Chest, though it looks like a legit project until you go to the site. Google also did some bullshit like that with the Davinci Code too. I don't care if they want to advertise it. I have a big problem when they try to trick their users into thinking it's useful content.

Brand new look?

[dedazo]

C'mon now. How is this better than SourceForge? I mean SF.net has its problems (CVS servers in the gunk babeeee!) but they've been honing this thing for years. How long is it going to take Google to get to the level of domain knowledge SF.net has? The folks at Google are smart, but they're not experts at everything.

Call me a cynic but I think this is just a way to get more ad revenue. Kudos for them and all, but their offering better be *far* better than Berlios, GNU Savannah and SF.net for people to sign up.

Re:Brand new look?

[Bandman]

heretic! ;-)

Re:Brand new look?

[IamTheRealMike]

Bear in mind Greg Stein is from Apache and whilst Apache is mostly known for the web server it also does large scale project hosting for server side Java software. So they have a fair bit of experience with svn, bug trackers and the like (i believe apache uses jira - proprietary bug tracker ;)

Re:Brand new look?

[PGC]

Actually, they appear to be targeting the 'little' projects; people who merely want a repository for their projects with a small bugtracker. The project pages clearly show only three tabs: 'description', 'issues' and 'source' in contrast to SourceForge where you have a whole jungle of sections.

Re:Brand new look?

[Wonko42]

By "honing this thing for years", do you mean "ignoring this thing for years"? I began using SourceForge the day it was announced, and I stopped using SourceForge about two years later when it became clear that they had no plans to fix many of the ridiculous bugs and annoying usability problems that have been there from day one.

* checks SourceForge again

Yep, same issues still there. SourceForge might get the job done, but it's not exactly getting the job done well, and they don't appear to have any interest in improving things.

By the way, Google isn't running ads on the Google Code pages. This isn't about ad revenue.

Re:Brand new look?

[xenocide2]

Maybe the massive difference is that this thing ties into people's online identities in ways that MS passport could only have dreamed of. I suspect the focus will be on improving interactions between relatively seperated developers and new end users. Compare Google's "new bug" submission vs SourceForge's, or the default bugzilla mess (and associated identity tracking nightmare).

Re:Brand new look?

[keesh]

Well considering Berlios can't keep mailing lists or subversion up for more than a few days at a time, that shouldn't be hard... This stupidity, for example, is holding up a project release. Now, I realise I'm not paying anything for the service, but this kind of thing is coming close to convincing me that I should be...

Re:Brand new look?

[westlake]

How is this better than SourceForge?

I can't speak to what developers need.
But as a non technical end-user, simply looking for programs or add-ons of interest, I'd welcome any improvement on Sourceforge.

Re:Brand new look?

[pembo13]

well for one, it looks better.

Re:Brand new look?

[NullPointer]

By the way, Google isn't running ads on the Google Code pages. This isn't about ad revenue.

Google didn't used to run ads on their search pages either. It is all about timing, just wait a while.

Re:Brand new look?

[Wonko42]

http://code.google.com/hosting/faq.html#adsonproje ct

Re:Brand new look?

[NullPointer]

From the link you provided:

http://code.google.com/hosting/faq.html#adsonproje ct

Are you going to put ads on my project page?
        No. Ads aren't part of Google Code at this time.

Like I said, they didn't used to have ads on their search pages...

Re:Brand new look?

[Wonko42]

They didn't have ads on their search pages because AdSense didn't exist.

There are no ads on project pages right now. When there are ads on project pages, feel free to start whining. Until then, it's a little silly, isn't it?

Re:Brand new look?

[NullPointer]

Hehe, I'm not whining, I am predicting the future. And, since I'm not a god or a prophet, I will concede your point...

Re:Brand new look?

[ergo98]

They didn't have ads on their search pages because AdSense didn't exist

Huh? What sort of recursive, bizarre logic is that?

"They didn't have ads because they hadn't created the structure to sell the ads."

Uh huh. Google did what was necessary to get marketpresence, which they did brilliantly, and then started cashing in. There is absolutely no reason to presume that they won't do the same with this, so any differentiation based upon ads is a false difference.

Re:Brand new look?

[Wonko42]

You're proving my point just as well as you're proving anyone else's. There's recursive logic on both sides of the argument. As I said, until ads actually appear, it's silly to whine about them.

Re:Brand new look?

[ergo98]

As I said, until ads actually appear, it's silly to whine about them.

It isn't silly whatsoever. With systems like these there is intrinsic lock-in (if just acclimatization and fear of change), and Google is basically selling a false bill of goods. Everyone knows that Google's going to switch to an advertisement model soon enough, but instead of being honest and upfront about their business model, they're trying to get lots of projects in there, along with some momentum.

From a business perspective there is nothing irregular about their activities, but as a user who knows, with absolute certainty, that the boom will fall after the product sees activity, it's something that I keep in mind.

Re:Brand new look?

[Wonko42]

SourceForge is littered with ads. Why not whine about that? Those ads are actually there right now. Google's are hypothetical and in the future.

Even if they do throw some ads on the site, what's the big deal? Are you so far behind the times that you don't have AdBlock installed?

Re:Brand new look?

[ergo98]

SourceForge is littered with ads. Why not whine about that?

Because I'm not arguing this as "Google versus Sourceforge". It's simply inescapable that soon enough it'll be littered with ads, and it just seems disingenuous for it to be portrayed any other way.

Are you so far behind the times that you don't have AdBlock installed?

Generally I don't block ads (yeah it gives me tiny pangs of guilt that I'm "stealing", as in "if you have a problem with the ads, then take your browsing elsewhere"). I do block popups, as that is over the top however.

Re:Brand new look?

[MikePilato]

> The folks at Google are smart, but they're not experts at everything.

That might be the case, but you can bet they are experts at Subversion. C'mon -- Greg Stein, Ben Collins-Sussman, Brian Fitzpatrick?! These guys helped to start the Subversion project. And as former CollabNet employees, they know a thing or two about hosted, integrated developer tools, too.

Re:Brand new look?

[hritcu]

C'mon now. How is this better than SourceForge?

It's cleaner and faster ... a lot faster. No, it does not (yet) have all features I would need but I'm sure they will improve. And yes, they will probably replace SourceForge in some years, the same way Gmail replaced Yahoo! and Hotmail. Did Gmail have more features right from the start?

Re:Brand new look?

[hacker]

C'mon now. How is this [google.com] better than SourceForge? I mean SF.net has its problems (CVS servers in the gunk babeeee!) but they've been honing this thing for years. How long is it going to take Google to get to the level of domain knowledge SF.net has? The folks at Google are smart, but they're not experts at everything.

You're right, Mantis excels and exceeds what Google is providing, and doesn't have that "corporate accountability" edge to it. Its powerful in every way, and ties directly to CVS/Subversion, as well as works with every "big" DBMS out there (Oracle, MS-SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL). We've been using it for 7-8 years now, with thousands and thousands of entries filed, without any problems.

But Google DOES have smart people, and many of them are developers and contributors on major OSS projects like CVS, Subversion, Mailman and others. SourceForge.Net got it WRONG , by crippling their applications (Mailman anyone? CVS anyone?), and they're peeling off hundreds of users per-week.

Last estimates I heard was that 40% or more of Sourceforge projects are either completely empty (not a single developer assigned), or abandoned completely, before any code was uploaded.

Pitiful and depressing. They should purge them all off, if they haven't been logged into in over 1-2 years.

Re:Brand new look?

[gstein]

I'm in charge of the site. We will not place any ads on the project pages.

In the future, we may allow project owners to *choose* to display AdSense and then revenue-share the proceeds. This could be an interesting way for projects to generate some funds. But even then, I think we will only place them at the *bottom* of the page so as not to interfere with the overall clean look of the page.

"Sourceforge has the occasional problem"

[jbellis]

More like, "sourceforge has constant outages, a glacial improvement pace, and the slowest response time of any site I use on a regular basis."

Bring on googleforge.

but is it open source

[brenddie]

But, is it open source? Not like sourceforge is.

Re:but is it open source

[Anonymous Coward]

it used to be history

Re:but is it open source

[WilliamSChips]

I think you mean "Not like SourceForge was."

Re:but is it open source

[rm69990]

Sourceforge is no longer open source....durrr

Actual news on slashdot

[jaaron]

That was _fast_. The announcement session hasn't even finished at OSCON.

Greg just mentioned that a downloads features will be coming to Google Code Hosting.

Re:Actual news on slashdot

[jamie]

Hi. I'm sitting in the room with you :)

Re:Actual news on slashdot

[Amouth]

i am there in sprit form.. someone trap it and mail it back please

Re:Actual news on slashdot

[jZnat]

It was so fast, neither the Newsforge article nor the Google Code website in question were available during the "mysterious future" period. I'm serious; the article had the "Nothing to see here, move along" message, and the Google link 404'd.

Re:One word...

[dhasenan]

Because SourceForge seems to be dying--no CVS services for several weeks tends to kill the faith people have in you.

On the other hand, I'd have said the same about AOL, too.

Not that I'm arguing with the decision--it's good to have multiple repositories in case one goes down.

Next: Googledot?

[bomanbot]

Whats next? An extension to Google News, where nobody reads the articles, but everybody stays for the discussion? I smell a pattern here ;-)

Re:Next: Googledot?

[Durrok]

Well in all fairness many people read /. from work as I do. Many of us have thing like Websense or internet usage being monitored to worry about. Unless it's from a major news site I cannot get to the article to read and the usual mirrors are blocked. However my work does not block duggmirror so if I really want to see the article I will post it to digg (Which 99% of the time it is already in queue, if not front paged) and then use duggmirror to view the article when it caches it.

So yes, I commonly just read the comments and the summary of the article in the subject line. I however try not to make a post ABOUT the article unless I am already familiar with the topic they are discussing.

Re:Next: Googledot?

[dodobh]

Here. They did that already.

Re:I was going to say that without ads it was nice

[Dan Berlin]

So, uh, what makes you think google created that project

Re:I was going to say that without ads it was nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Another none event:

This site uses JavaScript.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser and then click here to enter the site.

We've detected that you need a later version of Flash Player to view this site.

It's FREE so download Flash Player here.

When you've installed Flash Player or if you're sure you have it, click here to enter the site.

Why the fuck is this garbage listed in an OSS repository?

Here's a couple of alternative domain names for them:
discoverthegapingsecurityholecalledjavascript.com
 
discovertheproprietrypluginthatisruiningtheworldwi deweb.com

It's all about the issue tracker

[delirium28]

I use Sourceforge strictly for the file sharing aspect of it. I use my own provider for my source project (mainly because I use Java Web Start, which isn't allowed by SF's "Terms of Use" for the free hosting) but their issue tracker really, REALLY sucks.

I use JIRA for my issue tracking now, and I couldn't be happier. Looking at Google's current offering, I probably won't be switching anytime soon.

Re:It's all about the issue tracker

[ForeverFaithless]

Yeah, same for us. With Amarok, we've gradually switched from sf.net services to KDE's, and it's so much better. Mailing lists, bug tracker, hosting.. we all do it elsewhere. Only thing we use sf.net for is tarball hosting.

Not only is sf.net unrealiable, but the interface is plain horrid. Good riddance.

pretty spartan

[hawkeesk8]

Google will have to put some serious work into their site for it to catch up to Sourceforge. Their site is *VERY* spartan and lacking in features. They use the default, out-of-the-box subversion webdav so when viewing the source there is no syntax colouring and the bug tracker has no features what so ever. But knowing google and their vast resources it probably won't be long, if the service looks like it will garner interest, until new features start showing up by the dozen all with nifty AJAX interfaces.

Read the FAQ

[dmoore]

The FAQ for Google's hosting service is here:
http://code.google.com/hosting/faq.html

Re:I was going to say that without ads it was nice

[IamTheRealMike]

It is listed there because it uses the Google Earth API, and this is quite clearly spelled out on the page. The "Featured Projects" section is not a list of Google open source projects, it is a list of projects that use Google APIs or code in some way.

Let's see what they do

[BigCheese]

Right now it's sort of an 'eh' service. We've got Subversion, a simple issue tracker and a really primitive home for each project. It's no SourceForge but it is fast.

It will be interesting to see what direction they take it.

Re:Let's see what they do

[gnufied]

Yeah there ain't any point in jumping the gun.People would need SSH access and hence can probably probe into google's infrastructure a little more. google would allow that? Why no project page hosting? i mean, just host the files and f**k off, is it? People would need project page hosting. Also, google is a huge beast.What if they started stealing ideas and implement them in house, without ofcourse releasing to public ever.Oh no really i am serious, lets say, one guys starts some cool opensource project and google spots it and hijacks it?

Re:Let's see what they do

[BigCheese]

They don't have any build machines so SSH wouldn't be all that useful. You're right though they do need some basic page hosting.

I think Google has better things to do then hijack Open Source projects.

Re:Let's see what they do

[rm69990]

Well, if you would take a moment to read the GPL (or any OSS license for that matter), you would know that Google could just as easily do this with a project on Sourceforge, Freshmeat or a random webserver and it would be completely legal as long as they didn't distribute it as a binary to anyone. So what exactly is your point? How is it any different in this regard using any other hosting service compared to Google?

Re:Let's see what they do

[jtwronski]

Also, google is a huge beast.What if they started stealing ideas and implement them in house, without ofcourse releasing to public ever

Ummm, companies do that sort of thing all the time. There's nothing at all stopping Microsoft, Sun, Cisco, the church around the corner, etc, from hitting up sf.net and getting any code they want to use internally. If they turn it into a product and release it to the public, then there might be a problem, depending on the license (read: gpl).

Re:Let's see what they do

[linvir]

People would need project page hosting

http://pages.google.com/

They have the majority of the code and infrastructure in place in Google Pages. From there, it's a matter of integration.

Re:Let's see what they do

[JahToasted]

dude they have access to the source anyway... its open source. You don't have to be google to steal people's open source projects. In fact google has a lot more to lose than the average company.

Re:Let's see what they do

[Fourier]

I don't find it terribly compelling at the moment. Subversion sucks*, and having a place to park the official website is pretty important.

As a fan of various distributed version control systems, the most important feature to me is a sizeable web space quota with sftp access. Just give me a place where I can mirror my repositories and put up a homepage. Throw in mailing lists and bug tracking, and I'd be happy.

* By "sucks," I mean "is incredibly limiting when compared to modern DVCSs."

Re:Let's see what they do

[hritcu]

What do you find limiting in Subversion?

Re:Let's see what they do

[Fourier]

It's not distributed, so the project workflow is limited to the centralized model. It lacks powerful history-sensitive merging algorithms. It does not support "true renames." You can't run it purely off of widely available dumb file transports like sftp and http (it requires its own server).

Subversion is better than CVS, but that's about all you can say for it. The overall design is uninspired.

Alternative Site

[LaNMaN2000]

Like its other non-search offerings, Google is behind the curve on this one. Sourceforge seems to be more feature packed than what Google is proposing, we have already launched a social code sharing site (see our sig) and Koders already searches millions of lines of open source code. Google strategy seems to be releaing me-too sites that are not positioned to be mafrket leaders (Google Finance, Orkut, Google Talk, etc.).

Re:Alternative Site

[oxfletch]

Yeah, because they'll never modify it again after releasing it ...

Repeat after me "Sourceforge is a stinking piece of shit".
You can't even easily link to a download.

Re:Alternative Site

[miro f]

you have to remember that this project was probably created by a small group of developers in their spare time. Since Google developers get 20% of their time available to make their own projects, many small, unfeatured projects are created (like GMail was I believe one of these projects) and then get improved over time.

This could go anywhere, but Google probably haven't invested much in it yet...

Re:Alternative Site

[hritcu]

Not to dissgree with you on the stinking part, but you can link to a download ... like this:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/myproject/mypro ject-0.10.tar.gz?download

One of the best things they could do is...

[symbolic]

MAKE IT EASY.

Granted, this is easier said than done, but it seems like reporting a bug or issue, or just providing feedback is a MAJOR hassle. Having to "sign up" and "have an account" just to report a problem is a pain, and then on top of that, having to navigate a labrynthine website to hopefully end up at the right place - I imagine that it turns away a lot of people who just don't have the time or energy to deal with it.

Re:One of the best things they could do is...

[gonkem]

You'd be amazed at the number of link spammers that issue tracking and wikistyle sites attract. Signup raises the bar (they will register and link spam); and then makes it simpler to find all instances of defacement if it occurs.

Don't blame google; blame the link spammers.

p is projects

[mlinksva]

I especially like that they use '/p/' in a url where sourceforge uses '/projects/'.

Re:p is projects

[Ninwa]

Yeah, those jerks, how dare they use the letter 'p'!

Re:p is projects

[Krishnoid]

Well, at least somebody finally got around to this.

Re:p is projects

[mlinksva]

Hilarious! I love it.

Re:One word...

[dramenbejs]

I think you meant this in humor, isn't it? One must be careful here... :(

Beating SF ...

[lintux]

Beating SourceForge shouldn't be hard. Just leave out that terrible mirrors page on every binary download and they're done. I really hope there'll be a day when the SourceForge people will come up with something more convenient... (Just using HTTP Location: header forwards instead of HTML META tags would be a start!)

Re:Beating SF ...

[rossturk]

We've been gathering input on the download system, well, pretty much since it was created. Personally, I find it painful, but there are a lot of reasons why it is the way it is today. That said, a replacement for the download system is currently in planning, and our primary aim is to allow consumers to get what they're looking for with fewer clicks. Our current phases tend to be about 90 days, and we plan to enter implementation in August.

Re:Beating SF ...

[mikeboone]

How about giving us a single URL to download a particular file from, then your system can route us to the least-taxed mirror? A lot of times I just want to wget something on an SSH terminal and instead I have to use lynx and wade through pages, or download it locally to my PC so I can get a URL to use with wget. Then I've wasted bandwidth starting two downloads.

Re:Beating SF ...

[rossturk]

Mike:

Yeah, for a developer-oriented site, we should be far more understanding of folks using wget. :) That, as well as some detection of the closest mirror, is part of what we've begun designing.

Thx,
Ross

Re:Beating SF ...

[mikeboone]

Cool. I'm glad you guys are working on it.

Re:Beating SF ...

[jschrod]

Hey, that would be really great, as it makes it easier to mirror released files of selected SF projects.

I'm one of the CTAN administrators, and we often have the requirement to mirror released files of TeX-related projects on SourceForge. That is better for the TeX community since TeX-Live and eventually MikTeX prefer to take their upstream material from CTAN, their workflow processes are set up this way. (We have downloads of >6TB per month on our three main nodes currently, not counting our dozens of mirror sites. Yes, TeX is alive and kicking!)

Currently we're working with a mirror script that I wrote that scraps the SF HTML download pages and determines the files to mirror and the files to delete. Having stable URLs for downloads would make the job of that script much easier and would create easier operations on our side.

So, here's to let you know that advances in this area would really be appreciated.

Chris diBona eh?

[MadJo]

I hope this gets discussed at FLOSS Weekly or This week in Tech.

Give it some time, I think...

[Ninwa]

I wouldn't give up on it yet, they just released it. People say the same thing about all of their services when they first release them, but over time through their extended "beta" periods, they just get better and better. They're just laying the groundwork, I bet they have some cool stuff planned. And even if they don't, this service still looks valuable to small projects.

I'm heading off to college this fall and I may use this as sort of a means of portfolio'ing all the code I write during class, who knows.

Seems to be broken, a bit

[DavidRawling]

I don't know how ready the service is for use yet. I've just tried to create a project for hosting the stuff I presently use a VM for at home, and twice it's failed. Each time I get a 502 error; when I attempt to redo the creation, I'm told I can't use the name I had previously picked (presumably it's partially in use).

Anyone had success in the last hour or so, creating a project?

Ugh

[Anthony Liguori]

Subversion only, no real mailing list integration, no real web hosting to speak of. The lack of ads is nice but what I really want is more flexible revision control (I'd like to use mercurial), mail man integration (that doesn't lag like crazy like sf), and a place that I can host a wiki.

Centralized revision control is so 2002 :-)

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

I too am amazed they use something like subversion today. There are many interesting (and better) VCS comming now. Sure, they are not 100% proven yet, but google has the chans to fix that.

If google would join cannonical on bazaar it would become a kick-ass VCS for the future (it already is kick-ass, but will become even better).

Mercurial is also excellent and would have been a much better choice than svn.... /E

Downloads

[Threni]

Perhaps they'll make it easier to download stuff from than Sourceforge. Maybe it's me, but a `download` button should let you download something, not show you some of the contents of what a working system would let you download.

At random, look at this project:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ftimes/

You click on download...but you get taken off to some other page where you can download, seperately, some of the source files.

Re:Downloads

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about?

You click download and you get a page that has one gziped tarball of the whole source. There are no 'separate [...] source files' to download.

Whining

[PGC]

People complain that this Google project does not offer the same amount of features/sections as Sourceforge and thus must be worse. How often is it not that half of the sections on Sourceforge are empty (Documents is a nice example)? Resulting in completely confused visitors... Then are those that say it doesn't offer a project page, while most people using sourceforge do not keep their project pages on sourceforge either. As I see it, this Google service offers exactly what I've been looking for recently: a quick and simple method to maintain my small projects online without any application/approval periods.

Re:Whining

[keytoe]

No kidding. I was hoping that here, of all places, somebody with a rational head on their shoulders would offer some objective and intelligent commentary on the differences between SF and this service. God, was I wrong - even with a threshold set at 2!

For a vast majority of small open source projects, SF is far from ideal. I can't count how many times I've been lost in the myriad-yet-always-included tabs of non-information. Most people with small open source projects do not need the level of complexity SF forces on you - they simply need an issue tracker, a repository and a way to handle some basic delegation.

Yeah, you could get that done with some off-the-shelf packages installed on your own web host. But just because you write software doesn't mean you want to spend a lot of time stitching a bunch of disparate web widgetry together into a working system. Worse, you end up with a system that looks and works an awful lot like... SourceForge.

And this is all from a developers point of view. Sending users to SF for bug reporting and feature requests is effectively telling them that you're not interested in their feedback.

After actually signing up and looking at what Google is offering, I'm impressed. It's exactly enough to handle the busywork of project management and it leaves the 'marketing' side of writing up web pages to you. Could it be more feature rich? Of course. But I like the whole idea of integrating smaller, special purpose applications rather than the whole monolithic design philosophy inherent in SF.

For anybody that cares: My Project.

Reluctantly, I find myself agreeing

[rucs_hack]

I've used sourcrforge for my project for the last four years. I have a small but constant stream of people downloading my project.

I have had numerous problems with services going offline, each time it's been annoying. recently I couldn't access the web page admin, so I haven't been able to update the site to reflect a new version of my software. As I've been working on the new release for a couple of months, this is a major issue for me.

Plus you now have to pay to get the very best service. I can't afford this, so I'm stuck with the less able service. They claim the normal free service is unnaffected, but I have my doubts. Even when everythings working it's not especially easy to use, and I don't much like some of the changes to the site they've added of late.

Their intentions may be good, and I do understand the need for funding, but non paying users are being effected, regardless of their intent. Paying users get better project admin options/tools too, and I'd rather like that. I'm a poor student though, such things are outside of my budget. I must say sourceforge has lost its appeal for me of late because of these things.

I think I may give google a try, and tramline the two for a while.

That's the open source way, the superior product survives based on how good it is.

Re:Reluctantly, I find myself agreeing

[rhavyn]

Hello,

I'm an architect at SourceForge.net and I designed and implemented the search functionality that is currently running on the site. I take any complaints about the quality of the search results quite seriously. From I've seen, most of our users are quite happy with the latest revision of the search engine (launched in April of this year). However, if you could give me specific search terms that are returning poor results and some examples of what you think it should be returning I'd be happy to look into it to see if there is a bug in the search or statistics engines producing the poor results. My SF.net username is the same as my /. username, feel free to email me there.

Thanks,
--Chris

Re:Reluctantly, I find myself agreeing

[Anonymous Coward]

I just searched for the first word I saw when I went to sf.net: "antivirus".

Why is "Moon Secure Antivirus", with rank at 28,000, no files, 0 downloads, registered this year, and only 82% activity considered more relevant than ClamAV?

That's just not helpful! I'd rather not see something that has zero downloads but has more occurances of "antivirus" in the description (or whatever contributed to the relevancy score).

Yes, I can change the sort order. But why make me jump through hoops to wade throug these low-quality projects?

Re:Reluctantly, I find myself agreeing

[larytet]

SF has problems. i had to stay with Tigris or start project on the Berlios instead of SF. But overall SF is not bad. In many respects it is quite good.

CVS story is ugly. I discovered that the links from the WEB site larytet.sf.net do not work 2 or 3 weeks after it happened. They could keep the links working. It is not a technical nightmare to keep old links from breaking or at least redirect them

I miss good built in forum support. Their PHP could run on better servers.

Indeed servers are down too often for any popular project, but my project is not that important and popular. I do not need 100% up time.

Their support was so far good and quick, typically in less than 24 hours i get helpful response

Overall i would give to SF 7 from 10

Re:Reluctantly, I find myself agreeing

[rhavyn]

Hi,

Thanks for pointing that out. I'll admit, Moon Secure Antivirus might not be the best candidate for the first result, but the result set returned isn't that bad. ClamAV is the second result and it appears to me that several other results on the first page are pretty good. And in this case it looks like the differentiator was simply that Moon Secure AV has "antivirus" in their project description more often.

We are looking for ways to improve how we rank the relevancy of a project. Before your post I hadn't thought about using the registration date as a metric. Making projects listed on the site longer more relevant by a little bit isn't a bad idea and I may try playing with the tuning settings on my development machine to see what happens.

I do think saying we're making you jump through hoops is a little over the top, the results don't seem to me to be as bad as you're making them out to be. And the improved UI makes it easy for you to scan the results and reject them the way you did. But I certainly don't want to downplay your problems, so please keep providing feedback so we can continue to improve the site. The development team is very motivated to make the user experience on SourceForge.net as good as we possibly can.

--Chris

Re:Reluctantly, I find myself agreeing

[rhavyn]

Hi Reece,

Thanks for the words of encouragement. We've been working really hard to make the site better and I'm glad that it's visible in the results. If you do happen to find something regarding search that screems out to you, feel free to email me. We really do listen to the feedback we get.

Thanks again,
--Chris

Re:Reluctantly, I find myself agreeing

[rhavyn]

Hello again,

One of the issues that we struggle with at SourceForge.net, and one that you are hitting on right now, is we are trying to serve two very different audiences with different needs. The first is the end user who is trying to find a project to meet their needs. The second is the developer who is looking for an interesting project to work on. For the former you are right, it doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense to return projects which have no file releases. For the latter, however, file releases or the lack there of may or may not be a motivating factor. So simply eliminating projects with no file releases isn't an option.

Regarding the relevance of the results, the search engine uses the project ranking generated by our stats system. Tuning how much the project's ranking affects the relevance of the search results is a tricky job, however, because if we weight it too heavily then we end up back where we were when you hated the search results; it's just the projects listed by descending activity. We have probably taken a strong look at tweaking this four or five times since the April launch. We have also received comments from several high ranking projects who are unhappy that their project is no longer the first or second project in the search results. I guess you could say that I have a lot of respect for the Google engineers working on their Page Rank algorithm. :)

Finally, the search term you used triggers a somewhat less then optimal path in the relevancy algorithm. The problem is that the term 'php' is just so commonly used on the site that it's difficult to make any relevancy decisions at all based on the information available to the search engine.

Thank you again for your kind words,
--Chris

Re:Reluctantly, I find myself agreeing

[Eivind Eklund]

I would guess downloads / day over the last, say, 3 months should contribute much to the ranking.

It is possible downloads/release over the last year should contribute quite a bit (to cover the projects that's mostly interesting around release time).

Eivind.

Now they just need some OSS naming...

[StikyPad]

"Google Code" sounds way too professional. Might I suggest:

Google Repository for Open-Source Software
Or perhaps Google Open-source Repository Project.

Re:Now they just need some OSS naming...

[oxfletch]

Google Repository for Open Projects Evironment

Re:Now they just need some OSS naming...

[rapidweather]

Everybody else will have to get their stuff up there before I even think of it.
I want to see how that goes.

--Rapidweather

From their FAQ

[houghi]

What is code.google.com?
        Code.google.com is our site for external developers interested in Google-related development. It's where we'll publish free source code and lists of our API services.

So it is indeed nothing like SourForge where anybody can place their code.

Re:From their FAQ

[falsified]

How the hell is this offtopic?

Re:From their FAQ

[gravij]

You're reading the wrong FAQ.

The relevant one is at http://code.google.com/hosting/faq.html

Re:From their FAQ

[hitchhacker]

That FAQ is for code.google.com. The news is about the "Project Hosting" subset of code.google.com, which is a seperate and new project.
They probably need to update their FAQ now.

SourceForge has ads?

[aztracker1]

/me turns off adblock now... ;)

Centralized logging of communications?

[wyoung76]

Forums, IRC, email, etc. are all widely used as you've noted.

However, I'll hazard a guess that Google has the infrastructure and will to allow all your project members to have all project-related communications logged (I don't mean this in a paranoia-crazed world sense either).

When this new Google product becomes more mature I could easily see a time when a new project will allow you to create/add new members by gmail account or create a new project member account for the purposes of the project.

SF

[Vexorian]

I seriously think that sf 's main problem is speed (not when downloading files but when browsing project web/home) And the fact that the user has to deal with a gigantic list of mirrors each time you want him to download stuff. SF sure has a lot of features that currently google doesn't seem to be considering of adding. But fiu I currently don't use most of SF's features. I wouldn't go out to google though I would expect it to actually have a list of OS projects before joining. But I welcome the fact that there is going to be competence for sourceforge that might improve the things there.

So far, no luck

[DoktorSeven]

Trying to put something up there, and the subversion password they provided doesn't work (I get an "authorization failed" error from svn).

Could be that I just suck at subversion (entirely possible), but meh.

SourceForge.net and Google Code

[rossturk]

We just finished listening to Greg's presentation at OSCON, and so far we're feeling pretty good about what this means for the Open Source community, and, by extension, SourceForge.net. Because, after all, what's good for the community is good for us. Greg talked a bit about how he expects that users will want to "mix and match" tools that are offered at Google Code, SourceForge.net, and other repositories. This resonates very well with us, and is consistent with our longer-term goals - flexibility is one of the cornerstones of our larger strategic direction. Developers should work using the tools they want to use. We've got a pretty good relationship with the folks over at Google, and I really believe they're launching this because they, like us, care about Open Source and want to see it continue to thrive. We've begun disucssions about integration between SF.net and Google Code - you'll notice that you can't register projects on Google Code with SF.net project names. I expect there will be a much more substantial integration as the community makes its needs known. Thanks, Ross Turk (joined by Jay Seirmarco) SourceForge.net Engineering Manager

Re:SourceForge.net and Google Code

[hacker]

We just finished listening to Greg's presentation at OSCON...

Were these talks streamed somewhere? Or were you actually there to listen to the talks in-person?

Re:SourceForge.net and Google Code

[rossturk]

Hacker:

I was there in person. I do know that they were recorded, not sure if folks who didn't attend the show will be able to get a copy..

Ross

Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is encouraging piracy!!! :-)

Of course, I happen to think that's a good thing, ye scurvey dogs, ye.

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[account_deleted]

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I prefer this FAQ:

[Mr 44]

http://code.google.com/faq.html#q7

MOD PARENT UP!

[ghutchis]

Gee, someone from SourceForge reading Slashdot. Who'd have thought. ;-) You'd think they were part of the same group or something.

Good to hear that there's work on a new download system!

maybe google will even remember that i'm logged in

[mlinksva]

! (sf.net's "remember me" checkbox has never done anything for me. how annoying.)

GROSS

[hsoft]

Yay, same acronym as the "Get Rid Of Slimy Girls" club!

For open source project, going recursive is a must. Something like "Google Open-source Organized, Grand and Ludicrous Entity". Of course it doesn't make sense, but at least, it's recursive!

Re:GROSS

[Anonymous Coward]

GROSG?

Re:GROSS

[geminidomino]

Get Rid Of Slimy girlS

Keep in mind, this was created by the same six year old mind that brought us "Calvinball."

alternative

[pikine]

Your closest alternatives are BSD license or MIT license. BSD and MIT license differs in that BSD has this advertising clause: "Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission."

One huge improvement over SF

[PingXao]

I can't think of any implementation of forums worse than SF. None. The format and organization is horrendous. Google groups is already a better solution and I haven't even tried it yet. The SF public forums could be improved upon by anybody by accident.

Confusied

[glwtta]

What exactly is the relationship between the projects at http://code.google.com/projects.html, SourceForge, and Google?

They are all hosted at SourceForge, have identical googlified home pages, but don't look to be "owned" by Google (and why would Google host their own projects at SF, anyway?).

What gives? Are they community projects of some kind that have Google's blessing and branding?

Re:Confusied

[Brandee07]

From TFFAQ:

Why are you releasing code through Sourceforge?

Well, because they were nice enough to oblige, and because developers here like Sourceforge.

email has moved forward

[cariaso1]

While I applaud gmail as a huge step forward, its primary contribution was additional space.
Since you "haven't tried another since and doubt I ever will" I would just like to give kudos to the Yahoo Mail team. The new yahoo mail beta is chock full of ajax goodness and really blows away gmail. For the moment. The net seems to be a healthy ecosystem. I'm grateful to SourceForge for what they've created. But the comments here make it clear there is room for improvement. Perhaps google is just well funded enough to do a better job. Either way I guarantee we'll all be better off for their efforts.

Microsoft monopoly a good thing?

[QuantumFTL]

I wonder - if Microsoft was not such a big player, but rather there were several somewhat smaller players, like Microsoft, Apple, and IBM, would there be any large companies that invest in open source as IBM does now? I mean, it seems like one of the big reasons that IBM and Google invest in FOSS is because it is a good way to strike indirectly - and often directly - at Microsoft. If there was no "king of the hill," would we still see this level of investment?

Re:Microsoft monopoly a good thing?

[kripkenstein]

it seems like one of the big reasons that IBM and Google invest in FOSS is because it is a good way to strike indirectly - and often directly - at Microsoft. If there was no "king of the hill," would we still see this level of investment?

Interesting idea. But do they do it as a way to 'strike' at Microsoft, or because they make money from it? Even if the computer market was split 50-50 with Apple and Microsoft, IBM (and whoever else) could still make money selling Linux consulting, support, and so forth, so helping out Linux (by investing in Open Source projects) would be in their best interest.

As for Google, I think your point is stronger. Google's main interest (or one of them) is to maintain an environment where Google services can be used. This leads them to try to prevent a monopoly of the web browser market. If that market was completely fragmented (with standards-compliant browsers, one would hope), then perhaps Google would not support Firefox as they do. And perhaps much of their support for Open Source in general stems from that basic issue, who knows. I'm not sure.

Again, interesting idea. Worth thinking about.

Re:Microsoft monopoly a good thing?

[oneandoneis2]

IBM don't invest in Linux out of philanthropy, and they don't do it to "get at" Microsoft. They invest because Linux is a huge cash-cow, IBM knows how to milk it, and thus it makes them large amounts of cash. And that's what matters to a big company. They make money, we get something like a billion dollars a year invested in Linux, and everybody's happy.

Except MS. But that's their problem ;o)

Re:Microsoft monopoly a good thing?

[eipipuz]

Uhm, Neither Google nor IBM exist to attack MS. They are just making money. Every big name is after the same, Money. Each one has a different strategy, but thinking that weaking MS is the reason behind them using (notice I didn't say helping) Open Source is just incorrect.

The level of investment is directly proportional to what they expect to gain. Had MS disappear, nothing would change on their strategies. Sun would still be reluctant to opening Java, Google would still compete with Yahoo, and IBM would continue doing things like what they did with Eclipse.

Chris DiBona and SourceForge non-compete?

[otisg]

Wasn't Chris DiBona at SourceForge prior to Google? It's nice to see those non-compete agreements are not enforced. Good thing he didn't work for Microsoft, or he'd get a chair in the head. ;)

Re:Chris DiBona and SourceForge non-compete?

[larry bagina]

Most non-compete agreements are for a limited time (like 1 year). Excessively long terms have been struck down in court.

Re:Chris DiBona and SourceForge non-compete?

[zeruch]

Non-compete clauses are unenforceable in the state of California (of which Chris DiBona does and has resided since about 1997).

Bah! Kids nowadays...

[Anonymous Coward]

Attribution belongs to Mayor Daley - "Vote early, vote often".

Now git off my lawn or'll stick the dawg on yer!

No Disclaimer?

[indrax]

Isn't Sourceforge owned by Andover, which also owns Slashdot?

Isn't it generally policy to note such potential conflicts of interest?

BSD does NOT "have this advertising clause"

[jbellis]

This changed over seven years ago. To be unambiguous, Google (and others) refer to the updated license as the "new BSD license."

See: ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.Lic ense.Change

Re:BSD does NOT "have this advertising clause"

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes it does. That isn't the clause he's talking about (and indeed quoted).

He's talking about the 'non-endorsement' clause, which I guess you could call 'advertising'.

Yay!

[Cyno]

I love google.

Hey, one of us can read at least

[Draconnery]

Other responders:

There are only 9 words to misinterpret in the parent post. That's not really too many, but if you're in a hurry, I can see how you might need to post a critical response to the comment without taking time to understand it. I managed to figure it out, but I guess I'm just careful.

I'll translate, slightly more verbosely: "But, is it open source? I don't suggest that Sourceforge is, I'm just asking whether Google's version is."

Right, parent?

Ah, well, at least you got that random Funny mod. So you got that goin' for you. Which is nice.

Sourceforge quality

[LarsWestergren]

I think Sourceforge needs to improve their quality if they are going to remain as central as they have been for open/free software development. There exists many alternatives these days, JForge for instance, or java.net, Codehaus...

I have a collegue who is one of the submittors to JRuby. He told me they had huge problems with Sourceforge last 6 months. Servers were down all the time, which slowed down development. I blieve they almost didn't get the demo finished before Java ONE because of this, and now they have moved to CodeHaus instead. Subversion, JIRA for bug tracking, and so far very stable servers, so they are very pleased.

Re:Sourceforge quality

[LarsWestergren]

I should of course also mention that the JRuby team were grateful for all the good stuff Sourceforge had done for them. I have also personally worked on a few projects on SF and though I did have a few problems, mostly it was good, so I'm also grateful for all SF does for the the open/free software world.

Feature I Need: Migrate Project from Sourceforge

[hritcu]

If they would have a feature entitled "Migrate Project from Sourceforge" that would require only 1 click then I would use it.

Gathering Input ???

[hritcu]

"We've been gathering input on the download system, well, pretty much since it was created."

Don't want to be mean to someone who hosts my projects for free, and is offering a ... decent ... service.

But, is this really how you call ignoring complaints? ... Gathering input?

The download system was a pain for a very very long time ... How much "input" does SourceForge need to fix something that is actually so easy to fix?

Re:Gathering Input ???

[rossturk]

I think we have come to the realization that SF.net needs a bit of an overhaul...frankly, almost all of our resources in the past five years have been put towards coping with a tremendous amount of growth. The site was never designed to scale like we've had to make it scale. :)

However, we've almost tripled our staff in the past year, and we've begun doing some more intensive architectural work and focusing on the user experience. Since we've started this project, the Software Map, Search, and a lot of our most used pages have been redesigned. But we can't unravel it all overnight - something I've learned working on this site is that it's a very different thing coding on a site that already has twenty-four million unique visitors a month.

Hang in there, and thanks for being outspoken.
Ross

Re:I was going to say that without ads it was nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, thanks for the link! I have to say that Pirate Island was pretty fucking fun for five minutes. :D

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[account_deleted]

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You fail it

[Anonymous Coward]

too obscure

Wrong page

[ESqVIP]

You're confusing things up.

The website you checked is Google's developer center (which has been around for a much longer time), not necessarily just OSS, and those featured projects are third-party projects using Google APIs, not related to the project hosting.

The actual open-source hosting is at http://code.google.com/hosting/.

Of course, since it is Google...

[hicksw]

all your uploaded source may be processed in order to serve you targeted advertisements.

Perhaps this is to discourage FOSS developers from using their Gmail accounts as CVS.

MOD PARENT UP

[Deef]

MOD PARENT UP

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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SourceForge's misleading nav bar and inactivity

[spage]

It seems SourceForge provides every project an exciting feature-packed navigation bar that points to a bunch of pages regardless of whether you have anything for them!

Summary | Admin | Home Page | Forums | Tracker | Bugs | Support Requests | Patches | Feature Requests | Screenshots | News | CVS | Files | Search News

I've wasted hours clicking through all those links to figure out whether projects have any "meat" to them. I've complained about this horrible misfeature for four years to SF.net, but the idea of a dynamic navigation bar that reflects the actual contents of a project is too hard for their system.

Also SourceForge really needs a blog for each project, and an automatic summary showing historical activity on a project (check-ins, downloads, bugs changing state, etc.). Anything to reveal all the dead lifeless projects!