Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Where Do You Get (or Share) News About Open Source Projects?
An anonymous reader writes "Now that freshmeat.net / freecode.com doesn't accept any updates, I wonder how the Slashdot crowd gets news about new projects, and even new versions of existing projects. For project managers, where could you announce new versions of your project, so that it can reach not just those who already know the project. Freshmeat / Freecode had all the tools to explore and discover projects, see screenshots (a mandatory feature for any software project, even with only a console interface or no interface at all) and go to the homepage of the project. I subscribed years ago to the RSS feed and sometimes found interesting projects this way. You could replace these tools by subscribing to newsletters or feeds from the projects you follow, but that doesn't cover the discovery part." And do any of the major development / hosting platforms for Free / Open Source projects (GitHub, Launchpad, or Slashdot sister-site SourceForge) have tools you find especially useful for skimming projects of interest?
I get all my news and updates from slashdot. It's the only source anyone needs.
linux.softpedia.com
osnews.com
Linux Today
Linux Weekly News
This is the former ohloh.net, can be very useful also to understand how active a project is and how did it evolve.
What's wrong with just googling for stuff
Googling usually works for me, but I browse the results with the image tab. This way, I only take a look at open source projects with actual screenshots.
In any case, the original question seems to be asked from the point of view of a marketer. A developer will often know where to advertise his open source project for the type of community he's catering for. That's the key. Know your community of users. Know where they hang out and what they read. And once you have a couple of users that recommend your open source project (assuming they like it), then your project will start to gain page rank in Google, and other indexes.
Just to give you a personal example. As an Android developer, I often hear of relevant open source Android projects I can use on DevAppsDirect, Android-related meetups, StackOverflow questions, and through Google searches. And obviously, if I was a different kind of developer, or if I was a different kind of project manager with a different kind of community/user focus, my sources could be very different.
What's wrong with just googling for stuff
Time.
Ideally, what you want is a list of projects which are simply and accurately described, not dormant or defunct, and generally regarded as useful or promising in their present state.
Yeah, but Slashdot has its own ideologies:
- Linux and Apple good, Microsoft bad
- copyright assertion bad, piracy good (since digital stuff was meant to be free). Big exception: GPL violations must be vigorously prosecuted
- patents are bad (this one I mostly agree with)
- privacy violation by the government for security is totalitarian and alarming, similar techniques by Internet companies is a necessary evil (as a business model)
- H1-Bs and offshoring of US/Western European jobs to developing companies bad
- technologies or companies promising to make programming and/or system administration dramatically cheaper and easier = quackery
etc
These biases are institutionalized and reflected on a daily basis in choices of stories, summaries, and (especially) moderation, which controls which posts will be read by most readers. If you happen to be on the majority side of these biases, you might not notice. But I find it annoying that thoughtful posts can be modded 0 so that they're well hidden while mindless rants parroting the view of the majority (often with F words that are apparently taken as evidence of passion) are modded up to +5.
As someone pointed out you have to have some idea of the project you are looking for. I have found many software projects on Freshmeat/Freecode just by going there 3 or 4 times a week. Sometimes there will be things listed that I had not given any thought to and then I see it listed there found it intriguing went to the web page and checked it out. Later on I would go back and download it because I would recall months later when the need arised it was there. Trying do that with google, what would be the search string, "New software"? Especially for us not searching for anything specific and just wanted to find new open source software in general.
http://freshcode.club
From their about page: .club TLD signalising a more community-inclusive direction."
"freshcode.club is a reimplementation of FreshMeat/FreeCode, which shut down in June 2014. It's intended to become a community-driven website again.
It's initially also a lookalike. Yet it's planned to differentiate the feature set and provide different frontends with shared datasets. A few notable design differences are:
No forced user accounts, just OpenID logins.
All content is licensed under CC-BY-SA to prevent another data loss situation.
JSON-based database exchange feeds and defining releases.json.
Automated release updates from VCS systems and project websites.
No commercial ads, no tracking cookies.
The project name freshcode.club is an amalgamation of freshmeat and freecode. Both domains have been reserved as placeholders for partner projects or varied frontends. With the new