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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.'"
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.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
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.
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.
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
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.
-- May cause nausea, headaches, and interference with electronic devices.
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
-- May cause nausea, headaches, and interference with electronic devices.
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Hello,
/. username, feel free to email me there.
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
Thanks,
--Chris
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?