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SourceForge Appeals To Readers For Help Nixing Bad Ad Actors
Last week, we mentioned that the GIMP project had elected to leave SourceForge as its host, citing SourceForge's advertising policies. SourceForge (which shares a parent company with Slashdot) has released a statement about those policies, addressing in particular both ads that are confusing in themselves and their revenue-sharing system called DevShare, based on the provision of third-party software along with users' downloads. Among other things, the SF team is appealing to users to help them find and block misleading ads, and has this to say about the additional downloads: "The DevShare program has been designed to be fully transparent. The installation flow has no deceptive steps, all offers are fully disclosed, and the clear option to completely decline the offer is always available. All uninstallation procedures are exhaustively documented, and all third party offers go through a comprehensive compliance process to make sure they are virus and malware free."
In the wake of the scandal I have just finished moving all my projects to GitHub, and man, it's been worth it. I mean, have you noticed how incredibly slow SourceForge is lately? I've been using it for over ten years now, and it's been getting slower and slower. I got used to it, but now on GitHub I'm constantly amazed that I don't have to wait a few minutes for the project page to load. Or the fact that I don't even have to go there any more because I can make releases by creating a tag and project web page is just another git branch. How do you update a SourceForge web page again? I'll have to look it up, 'cause I don't remember at all. I only remember that ssh, scp, and lots of manual copying was involved. SourceForge's release system is a pain, and really, the only feature SourceForge has that GitHub does not is access statistics, but this feature hasn't worked properly ever since the big UI overhaul a few years back. Frankly, I don't see any reason to ever go back to SourceForge.
Exactly.
I just checked yesterday, and the thing is still loaded with malware Download buttons.
This morning, it looks slightly different, but on four different projects the biggest button
on the page was MALWARE download button. (Adblock switched off).
Why can't they just put them all in a separate box labeled MALWARE - DON'T CLICK!.
Or header the column they are in with a ADVERTISEMENT - Not the software you were looking for" banner.
SourceForge has definitely suffered since being picked up by Dice Holdings, and it is probably
an indication of what will happen to Slashdot over time.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I'm tired of this ridiculous argument. It sounds stupid when you say it but you think you're technically correct. Well you're not. They actually have 2 sets of customers. They get something non-monetary from one set, which they trade to the other set for cash. If they lose either customer they are going out of business.