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GIMP, Citing Ad Policies, Moves to FTP Rather Than SourceForge Downloads
Dangerous_Minds writes "GIMP, a free and open source alternative to image manipulation software like Photoshop, recently announced that it will no longer be distributing their program through SourceForge. Citing some of the ads as reasons, they say that the tipping point was 'the introduction of their own SourceForge Installer software, which bundles third-party offers with Free Software packages. We do not want to support this kind of behavior, and have thus decided to abandon SourceForge.' The policy changes were reported back in August by Gluster. GIMP is now distributing their software via their own FTP page instead." Note: SourceForge and Slashdot share a corporate parent.
Haven't been impressed by SourceForge's recent policy of late- especially when I unclick the 'free software' offers attached to each download, yet they install anyway!
People who don't want to have to pay a monthly Photoshop bill care...
Please inform your "corporate parent" that installer hijacking is a dick move.
It's easy enough for me to click the Decline button instead of Accept (I'm one of the minority of users who reads things like that), but the installer doesn't even work that well. I was using Windows Remote Desktop to connect with a client's server, and the connection was pretty spotty. The server desktop was more like a slideshow. So instead of trying to edit code directly, I decided to upload all of their code to an FTP server, edit it locally, and then download the changes. So, I go to install Filezilla on the remote server. The entire SourceForge site is a mess. My remote desktop connection is already a slideshow and then SF is showing me Flash ads on every page, including the download pages, and when I finally punch through that mess and get the installer which I know is coming, I run the thing and it tells me I don't have an internet connection. Which is interesting, since I'm running the installer via remote desktop. Maybe it uses a port that was blocked on the network. After a few futile attempts to find a non-installer link on SF, I jumped back to my local PC and found a usable URL that I pasted into the remote desktop session to download. At least Filezilla is hosted on download.filezilla-project.org, but I'm sure there are a lot of projects hosted on SF that don't have a great alternative place to download.
Dice completely ruined the reputation of SourceForge. Slashdot isn't completely in the shitter yet, but I feel like it's inevitable. Well, we had a good run, anyway.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
"Sourceforge is garbage now."
So is Slashdot. Neither are an unbiased, open community anymore and as such no longer serve their intended purpose. Perhaps that was the goal all along.
Here is another bit of information that needs to be thrown in the mix.
From the Dice Holdings Inc. Third Quarter 2013 Results posted here:
http://www.diceholdingsinc.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=211152&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1869460&highlight=
"For the quarter ended September 30, 2013, Tech & Clearance segment revenues increased 12% year-over-year to $37.0 million, or 70% of Dice Holdings' consolidated revenues. Slashdot Media contributed $3.7 million to revenues in the third quarter of 2013, as compared to $0.8 million in the same period a year ago, while The IT Job Board® added $1.1 million to Tech & Clearance revenues in the quarter after writing down $0.4 million of acquired revenue. Third quarter revenues in our Dice.com service increased slightly compared to the prior year's third quarter, while ClearanceJobs.com posted a 5% year-over-year decline in revenues due to sequestration..."
When growth in all other sectors remained relatively minimal, revenue from Slashdot increased roughly four-fold. How, in the last year alone, has Slashdot managed to bring in that much more revenue? Who handed over nearly 3 million dollars this last year?
I don't think we can blame DICE for this. SourceForge has been increasingly bad for years. The real question is why DICE thought SourceForge was worth anything. Ten years ago, looking for open source stuff (or looking for somewhere to host a new project), SourceForge would have been near the top of my list. Now, and for the last few years, whenever I see a SourceForge link I expect to see either an abandoned project or a site that's totally impossible to navigate to find what I want.
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