Google Code Deprecates Download Service For Project Hosting

New submitter c0d3g33k writes "Google Project Hosting announced changes to the Download service on Wednesday, offering only 'increasing misuse of the service and a desire to keep our community safe and secure' by way of explanation. Effective immediately, existing projects that offer no downloads and all new projects will no longer be able to create downloads. Existing projects which currently have downloads will lose the ability to create new downloads by January 2014, though existing downloads will remain available 'for the foreseeable future.' Google Drive is recommended as an alternative, but this will likely have to be done manually by project maintainers since the ability to create and manage downloads won't be part of the Project Hosting tools. This is a rather baffling move, since distributing project files via download is integral to FOSS culture."

Comments

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Github did exactly the same thing quite some time ago, and people didn't complain too much. Why is this a big deal?

Re:So, "Don't Be Evil..."

[Luthair]

Github also had to discontinue file downloads for the simple fact that people abused it and used the service as a way to distribute content unrelated to the open source material.

Re:in future news

[Desler]

Github did the same thing last year.

Github did this recently

[oGMo]

Github did this recently too which was annoying, because it was useful. They're not entirely clear why ... "confusing" doesn't seem nearly as likely as "abuse", though I am not aware of any abuse in particular. Since Google is providing Drive as an alternative, and not even immediately removing the service for those using it, it's not even as bad as Github's move, which removed it for everyone. I suppose it's an opportunity to cut another Google dependency though if you really want.

Re:what's wrong with the command line

[Todd Knarr]

Because the average user doesn't want the source code, they want to download a prepared binary in an installer or zipfile?

Meanwhile, SourceForge reaches out to developers

[MAXOMENOS]

Quoting the comments:

Roberto Galoppini May 23, 2013 at 12:40 PM

SourceForge welcomes Google Code open source developers, to distribute downloads from our open source platform.

We serve over 150 Million+ downloads each month, reaching 42 Million+ unique visitors. We help tiny projects as well as whales like Apache OpenOffice to distribute their downloads via our worldwide mirror network.

By distributing your releases at SourceForge you’ll get a complete download analytics, and the opportunity to tap into a large open source community. We already serve other ecosystems by offering their hosted projects our download facilities, including Githubbers.

As a trusted partner for open source we're glad to help. https://sourceforge.net/publish/?source=googlecode

[Disclosure: I work for SourceForge]

Setup looks pretty simple; but, since I don't have code in Google Code, I can't put it to the test. Can anyone attest to how well this works?

Re:So, "Don't Be Evil..."

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect you may have misunderstood how one would actually abuse this.

I email you (or, say, your mom) a link saying Malwarebytes v.10 is now available for download, and it fixes a critical vulnerability and needs to be updated soon or you're at risk. Go to code.google.com/malwarebytes , a project that I've created. I might even populate it with something looking like code that would match, to trick people who are more technical than they really are.

A non-technical user may see that it's it's hosted at Google, and, having some trust for them, they choose to download. Your prompt shows up (what that accomplishes I don't know, so I assume the user, already intent on downloading it, answers it.)

So, by your second rule, they download MalwareBytes.zip, which contains MalwareBytes.exe (actually malware), and voila. 0wned.