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GIMP, Citing Ad Policies, Moves to FTP Rather Than SourceForge Downloads

Posted by timothy on from the voluntary-action dept.

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.

20 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. BT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Get a torrent up, many of us will seed for the community.

    1. Re:BT by ottothecow · · Score: 5, Insightful
      What's funny about this, is that part of what *sucks* about sourceforge's download pages is that they are littered with the same kind of ads that bittorrent sites have (I know, I know, they can host the torrent from their own tracker, not some pirate thing)

      You get to a download page and there are ads that scream things like "DOWNLOAD NOW", "CLICK HERE TO INSTALL", etc.

      Frequent/savvy users are able to figure this out, but when you tell your parents that they can get this free photo editor, they end up with the same damn crapware on their computer as they would have had if they just went ahead and tried to pirate photoshop. The same thing is true about Paint.Net's download page...on their page, I see two giant colorful "Download" buttons that are actually ads. The actual download link is a standard text link that says "Paint.NET v3.5.11" which takes you to another page that has another giant colorful "Download" button. On that page, the real download links look like fake links...the button says "Download Now DotPDN LLC" which doesn't sound at all like what you want.

      Sourceforge isn't quite as bad...the ads aren't always there, and often they show up on the post download ad-page (the one that says "your download will start shortly" so there if you click them, you often end up with both the file you want *and* the crapware...leaving a 50/50 chance the user will get the right file.

      I get why the pirate sites have these misleading ads (and it probably helps discourage people from software piracy since they try it, get some weird downloader and ad-toolbar instead of the software they were looking for, and then give up)...but when respectable free alternatives resort to the same shady ads? wtf?

      --
      Bottles.
    2. Re:BT by CastrTroy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sourceforge has been on a download slide for a while. I tried downloading FileZilla, via Sourceforge, their primary link, and instead of just using the regular installer, it uses a special Sourceforge installer that tries to get you to install other junk you don't need on your computer. If you click around a bit on the FileZilla site, you can fine the link to the bare-bones install.

      That kind of junk you talk about with Paint.Net is exactly why I don't use it.

      I very much support GIMP in using their own FTP server. Of course, nothing stops them from hosting their own bittorent tracker though. Using bit-torrent doesn't mean the torrent files has to go through the pirate bay or other torrent sites.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  2. good move by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!

    1. Re:good move by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Corporations, fucking everything for short-term profit .

  3. Good by Sean · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sourceforge is garbage now.

    1. Re:Good by sconeu · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Indeed. Good on the GIMP guys. Freaked me out the first time I got that on SF.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    2. Re:Good by CitizenCain · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How to destroy a powerful brand in 1 easy steps! (SourceForge, not GIMP.)

      And yeah, while SourceForge has been declining for a while now, this is something entirely different from a slow decline... they may as well have taken it out back and shot it. Be quicker, and probably cheaper in the long run too.

    3. Re:Good by amicusNYCL · · Score: 5, Informative

      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
    4. Re:Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      "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?

  4. Re:So Brave by Valdrax · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Note: SourceForge and Slashdot share a corporate parent."

    Then, have any of you (the editorial staff) thought to voice a complaint to your parent about being associated with what is widely considered a shady practice?

    --
    If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
  5. unacceptable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This whole installer hi-jacking is unacceptable. "OpenSource" just loose serious credibility.

  6. Re:who cares by hawguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    GIMP can't do CMYK, so WHO CARES??

    The majority of people that do graphics for web, not print?

  7. Good! by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As a fellow SourceForge user, I was also outraged when I noticed this. SourceForge used to be the go-to place if you had an Open Source project you wanted hosted. They've lacked focus for some time, making all sorts of failed changes that only bloated their surface area without bringing any actual benefit. Perhaps the screws are to them to become profitable. Slashdot's semi-recent foray into HTML5 randomness and video-ads-as-articles shows similar direction.

    They've lost a lot of their user base, are bleeding what they've still got, and potential new users are almost universally going to GitHub and the like. It's a bit depressing.

    1. Re:Good! by Kardos · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Someone should mirror sourceforge so when they do implode, the code/documents from any dormant projects isn't lost

  8. Lol, note. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Note: SourceForge and Slashdot share a corporate parent.

    Good to know I can blame the decline of two great sites on the same company.

  9. Re:who cares by NIK282000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It does everything else with 100% cost savings. I'm not paying Adobe near a thousand bucks for 2 features (CMYK and 16bit depth), that I can get by using a few other open source odds and ends in conjunction with Gimp.

    --
    Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
  10. Re:who cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    People who don't want to have to pay a monthly Photoshop bill care...

  11. The SourceForge Death Spiral by benjfowler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Am I the only one who noticed that while once upon a time, SourceForge were great, that it's declining popularity (no thanks to Google Code and Github) and falling website hits forced them to put up more, spammier, scammier ads?

    Then about a year or so ago, they went full-AOL, and the standards of the ads dropped dramatically, with misleading 'download button' ads leading to dodgy downloads; their hits must've dropped further, necessitating even more, even scammier ads.

    Looks pretty much like a tailspin to me. Too bad, because Sourceforge was one of the first and best Open Source hosting platforms at one stage.

    If I were in charge of it, I'd just take it out behind the shed and put it out of its misery.

  12. Dice and some real concrete steps by augustz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was user 341 at Sourceforge, 14 years ago.
    I always liked the SF.net idea. This is kinda sad to see happening.

    But enough crying over spilt milk.

    * Don't use Dice, don't hire folks using Dice.
    * Move your own projects off sourceforge.
    * If you need a project from sourceforge email them and ask them to avoid the download jacking by moving their project if possible
    * Support other providers who play fair.
    * If you use a website reputation tool, mark sf appropriately.