Slashdot Mirror
SourceForge Suspends Independent Project Mirroring
vivaoporto writes: In a reversal motivated by community concerns (like the high profile outcry over the distribution of an ads-enabled installer for GIMP and the accusation by Fyodor of the hijacking of the nmap SourceForge project), SourceForge has discontinued third-party bundling of mirrored content.
Along with that, as of June 18th, SourceForge started "removing SourceForge-maintained mirrored projects" and engaging their "newly-formed Community Panel to discuss site features and program policies including a redesigned mirror program." Of the 295 mirrored projects, they removed all that were "not co-maintained with one or more of the original developers, except where the upstream site has been discontinued." For those wanting to reach SourceForge for some constructive feedback, they point to the recently-established Community Voice forum. Note: SourceForge and Slashdot share a corporate overlord.
Along with that, as of June 18th, SourceForge started "removing SourceForge-maintained mirrored projects" and engaging their "newly-formed Community Panel to discuss site features and program policies including a redesigned mirror program." Of the 295 mirrored projects, they removed all that were "not co-maintained with one or more of the original developers, except where the upstream site has been discontinued." For those wanting to reach SourceForge for some constructive feedback, they point to the recently-established Community Voice forum. Note: SourceForge and Slashdot share a corporate overlord.
It took them long enough to reverse something that should never have happened in the first place. Sorry Sourceforge, we had a good run, but this finally pushed me to move else where for project hosting.
no one cares about you, and your download pages full of ads and big bright green fake download buttons. The only thing you can do that would be of any value, is something akin to the old Walnut Creek FTP site.
Otherwise, fuck off
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
In case you were wondering -
Yes, a scamware company which installs unremovable software to user's computers has editorial control over Slashdot.
Question - where should Slashdot users go? We obviously can't stay here.
They're already dead and they don't know it yet. There's nothing they can do to regain the trust they violated by instituting this policy in the first place; there's always the suspicion that they'll start again.
Good riddance, SF. You'll never rehabilitate your image, even if you are owned by Dice.
>> SourceForge and Slashdot share a corporate overlord.
How about a Kickstarter campaign to fix our current "corporate overlord" problem?
Hmm, time to build a new one. Shall we start a github project?
- Dan
Not sure if you're livving up to your username or what, but that's not true.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/06/01/1241231/sourceforge-and-gimp-updated/
Dice, SF, and slashdot genuinely fuck up frequently enough that we can do quite well without the histrionics and bogus accusations.
Uh, do you mean aside from the two other Slashdot articles linked in the summary?
So, I assume this means persons will be held responsible for their actions? What are the names of the people who made this decision, and what will be the consequences for their decision?
At this point, downloaders can't have confidence that any software coming from Sourceforge hasn't been tampered with and might include unwanted guests. Till they establish ethics in how they host software which conform to what most users expect from a software download site, they are a no go for me
I ditched SourceForge long ago - the smell was intolerable. But so far slashdot seems to have escaped the worst of the corporate overlord. I like what I read here, so let's give slashdot a second chance. There are no third chances.
Sourceforget.net is blacklisted here. I hold grudges.
SourceForge should never have been considered a potential revenue stream... it should have been preserved as a community service project that enhances your standing in relation to those parts of Dice that do generate revenue.
Corporate execs are far too quick to forget that.
Lots of tech companies subsidize community service projects - this is great, but abusing these efforts, and trying to make a quick buck off them is a quick way to damage your reputation in the tech world. Building trust and admiration through such projects takes time and effort, and can be very rewarding to a company's bottom line, but when you betray the trust, it can quickly become a poison that no amount of time can heal.
Dice, you've gained a lot of people who will never forget this. Certainly, many of them were not exactly fans to begin with, but they will be vociferous and their influence WILL impact your bottom line. Trying to make that quick buck will cost you far more in the long run. I certainly hope whoever was behind this "idea" has been sent packing. The road to rebuilding your reputation will be a long and painful one.
Trust is easy to lose and very hard to restore. Especially when the restoration is based on taking your time to see which way the wind's blowing. Thanks, but no thanks SF.
SourceForge was doing everyone a service by apping Luddite software using AppWare, so it could be apped by modern appers who only app apps!
Apps!
Yes, like rectal suppositories and anal lube. It's all very exciting, so I'm going to click on the Share link and tell all my imaginary friends in the Twitterverse and on Facepalmbook!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
sigh, I wondered why everything looked fucked up when I loaded the site :(
" With that in mind, SourceForge pledges to present third-party offers only with the projects that explicitly opted-in to that program."
These days, whenever I see a company or organization use the phrase "opt-in", I immediately tune out anything else that is said, and decide I want nothing more to do with that company or organization.
Proverbs 21:19
I know! We can build something and host the source on Sourceforge!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Interesting. How much do you think Slashdot is worth?
I'm tired of them "curating" the user experience...
BlameBillCosby.com
just move to https://www.soylentnews.org/ clon...
done... no kickstarted neeeded
Good luck, it is going to take a long time and a lot of effort to win back the trust the SF once had.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
clicked on a job ad just for shits and grins, linked to Randstad USA. Next day i get an e mail from Randstad...the only connection between my e mail address and Randstad is Slashdot...thanks for the spam assholes.
In a reversal motivated by community concerns
Bullshit. Dice doesn't care about any "community". It was a reversal motivated by the fact that they got caught serving crapware and people spread the info far-and-wide. Otherwise, they would have kept on serving the crapware unabated had they been able to contain the PR disaster.
I have often wondered about this myself. Is Slashdot worth more to its users that it is to its corporate masters? Is there some sum of money that unsatisfied Slashdot users could scrape together, perhaps over weeks and months, contributing some petty sum to some online swear jar whenever they encounter a petty annoyance, that would eventually accumulate into something that Dice would have to take seriously?
The thing is, from a revenue perspective, I'm not sure Slashdot is worth anything at all. There's no "there" there--its value is almost entirely in its network of engaged commenters. I'm pretty sure 9x% of the people who visit Slashdot use ad blockers, and even if you somehow found a way to sneak ads past the blockers, that would just cause those people to exodus anyway. So I guess ideally Slashdot would have to be run as sort of a public service, rather than as a money-maker. I figured Dice bought Slashdot and SourceForge to drive traffic to their job site, sort of as a loss-leader, goodwill gesture, look-at-us-we-totally-get-you-guys, please-consider-us-for-your-next-job-search sort of thing. But given how they're seemingly burning the goodwill candle at both ends by pushing through unpopular measure after unpopular measure, I have to admit I can't figure out what their real strategy is.
Then again, how much could Slashdot cost to run? It's just a forum, for chissakes, right?
Then again again, if it's just a forum, why hasn't everybody moved on, en masse, to one of the clones of Slashdot that disgruntled Slashdotters have started in recent years? Because it's all about the network, I guess, and two halves of a big network aren't even half as good as the original network.
Beats me. I hope somebody figures something out before too long, though.
"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."
- Warren Buffett
Can someone post alternatives to FileZilla ? That project embraced and supported the malware bundling.
Yep, if you don't cut out the Dice.com cancerous tumor then shit like this will keep happening. They'll just try to be more sneaky about it the next time around.
even if you somehow found a way to sneak ads past the blockers
Why do you think we get a link to a Dice story practically every day?
For me, trust in the SourceForge site is still not getting repaired until software like Filezilla can be safely downloaded with no fear of bundled "offered software"
I pity the fool that makes a recommendation to a client or vendor to use FileZilla.
For an illustration of how trust matters, go to the SourceForge site and compare customer comments of FileZilla vs WinSCP
WinSCP
Then again, how much could Slashdot cost to run? It's just a forum, for chissakes, right?
It's a forum that gets Slashdotted all day, every day.
I know a guy who wrote about some of his research, and it was Slashdotted. He analyzed the traffic pattern, and though I can't find that analysis any more, he estimated the budget it'd take to survive the story's front-page run without downtime. It was not a small number.
Extrapolate that to running all day, every day, and serving more than a simple static HTML page, and even with the improvements in technology, we're still going to be dealing in numbers where the rounding error is larger than the staff's paychecks.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Notice how all the comments on this thread that might offend Dice management have been downvoted as "Troll"? Don't worry, though. It's just a coincidence. A company with the strong moral fiber of Dice would never interfere in a public forum.
https://soylentnews.org
Just move projects to GitHub, and let Source Forge rot.
-1 ? Educate yourselves moderators. Only projects that don't opt-in are going to be malware free.
FileZilla made their position as having opted-in very clear.
WinSCP.
Too little too late.
I'm really happy (not surprised, as I expect unbiased content throughout /. ) that this article's tone is much more in line with what neutral journalism deserves. I am also glad about the topic itself: that SF has decided to do it all on fair'er terms - they seem to be going in the right direction on this particular mirror subject.
It's still a shame for the ads on all other things SF, besides the mirrors. We all dread ads, and only people who chose such a business model can make sense of things like intrusive, quasi-mandatory ads such as bundled installers with intentionally hindered opt-out controls. The fact that a company has a steep price on their product is one thing, as I can avoid it since it is such a public statement to have price X or Y. But when a company decides to charge me with my privacy or my attention to their cumbersome, crippling ads, in a surreptitious way, is something I take very personally.
I can also cope with unobtrusive ads like the ones here at /., but sometimes I will disable them, because, well, that's a right you provided me for my Karma. Thank you for that, and sorry for my little egoism.
I canceled my email subscription, so the only time I will hear about SourceForge any longer is when I read articles about it in this also-dying site.
Someone down mod this trash. And no it's not because you are female, it's because your post stinks of wahhhh me finger pointing at something you made up in your head.
And then what? Slashdot needs money on a regular basis.
Slashdot would need a way of getting enough people to pay to sustain itself, and that seems tricky. The audience is tech savvy with adblock and other places like reddit offer more value and still have trouble earning money.
So I guess ideally Slashdot would have to be run as sort of a public service, rather than as a money-maker. I figured Dice bought Slashdot and SourceForge to drive traffic to their job site, sort of as a loss-leader, goodwill gesture, look-at-us-we-totally-get-you-guys, please-consider-us-for-your-next-job-search sort of thing. But given how they're seemingly burning the goodwill candle at both ends by pushing through unpopular measure after unpopular measure, I have to admit I can't figure out what their real strategy is.
Maybe it's not an evil plan by Dice? I suspect it is some newly-appointed, over-eager IT dude that tries to "improve" the website and make it more 2.0, and perhaps also make some tasks easier for them (site management, statistics). The guy hasn't given up yet ;) but he is learning to make smaller steps.
Then again, how much could Slashdot cost to run? It's just a forum, for chissakes, right?
Then again again, if it's just a forum, why hasn't everybody moved on, en masse, to one of the clones of Slashdot that disgruntled Slashdotters have started in recent years?
That would require changing bookmarks, and habits, both of which is hard! *whine*
By the way, that soylentnews site is looking for someone to make their page (slashcode) more web 2.0. How ironic.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
/. doesn't demand nearly the traffic it used to. Likewise, it doesn't send as much traffic as it used to. So, it's no surprise kids these days don't even know what 'slashdotting' is!
I wrote about it on Slashdot, but my article was never posted, as are most of my stuff, probably because I am female.
Most submissions don't reach the front page. What gender you identify with is not relevant or applicable to that particular decision.
Source Who?
I'm sure they are and they can go choke on a bucket of dicks.
It's a real shame, there are some things the start off so beautiful but I feel get perverted with dollar signs in people's eyes.
It's one thing to advertise, but then put fake download buttons all over the place for things you aren't looking for?
That's almost as bad as if someone slipped in groceries you didn't want to buy before checkout.
It really ruins trust when companies behave this way. We didn't always use adblockers once upon a time, it wasn't bad enough to create enough of a need.
Everyone was okay with some ads, we respected that these companies need a way to make some money.
But now you can't trust the ads even if you were actually interested in what they're selling.
Please do not wish for them to be rewarded for doing something this bad.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
The enrichment center would like to remind you that ftp.exe is always there for you.
Given this kind of "spin" on the problem, I'm sure the client agreements with Slashdot will include "opt-in" as the default setting on every agreement.
But not for SCP of SFTP, There are a stack of reasons to detest SCP, including its lack of symlink and hardlink handling, its inability to negotiate dates if hte client and server use different local timezones, and the longstanding refusal of any SCP or SFTP server-side to provide a proper chroot cage environment to prevent users from accessing the rest of the server's filesystem. (There are workarounds, but they're horrible and unsupported by the SSH server maintainers as 'unnecessary'). And oh, yes, there's the "my IP address changed to match another old host, now my known_hosts is broken and requires manual repair with tools that only exist in Windows GUI's" problem.
I could go on all day with these problems. For an actual file transer system, it's pretty horrible.
By my count they are on their 87th chance. I have seen pissed at every change, even some that were imagined. I have yet to actually notice anyone leaving that said they were going to. I am sure some have - I do visit Soylent too, but I have not noticed any that do not also post here or they must use different IDs over there.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
"Note: SourceForge and Slashdot share a corporate overlord."
That explains a great deal about why both are terrible now.
It seems that one could possibly convince people to invest in purchasing this site and allowing it to be run by a community oversight committee of sorts though the funding parties would certainly want some control and veto power (as well as explicit ownership) and could probably run nothing but text based ads assuming we cheap bastards actually clicked on the ones that we found interesting. I suspect there would be some sort of no-compete but a jobs-offering (that is not abused and is realistic) alongside this would be awesome. We could even tie it in with custom profiles that offered freelance services and such. Hell, I would risk something for the potential on that. Assuming, of course, we would start clicking and buying stuff from ads. I suck - I do not even *see* ads here. Hell, I have to go through a bunch of steps just to get the JS to work.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
There was a short outage and then the CHANGE occurred. I thought it was one of the script/ad blocking add-ons but I was wrong. I refreshed and refreshed and hoped my eyes were wrong. They were not. I found the comment section links and all was good again.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
That was... That was beautiful! I am not sure why you did not get more bites. It is truly well done. Minimal effort, done. Clear and concise? Done. Quick and barbed? Yes, ma'am. It was a classic that was seen by nobody. I am sorry for your loss but you can truly tell tales of the one that got away - AND be correct.
Also, you are not really a female. No female is capable of good quick wit like that.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
I'm actually saddened by this loss. I feel like the OSS community is suffering a 'Google buys Deja News' moment.
Following the crapware/adware SF bundled with these mirror projects, the adblocker uBlock Origin decided to completely block access to all of sourceforge.net
Here is the commit.
I can still click on "allow once" and "always allow" (or whatever the name of these two button were). Not sure I want to though.
They seem to know the Reddit hug o' death just fine.
SourceFraud
FTFY
I don't trust it... I don't recognize that HTTPS protocol they are using.
I had a page linked from the Digg front page before that tanked. The page survived without a hitch, on $5/month shared hosting. A couple of megabytes per second at the peak. I didn't even get a warning from my hosting provider. It's not the size of the server but what you do with it that matters.
Hosting may have been a noteworthy cost 15 years ago, but processing power and particularly bandwidth are dirt cheap these days. Staff is certainly the bigger cost, by a wide margin.
"Open SORES" - it'll never last minus attempts @ monetization, 1st of all, & secondly?
FACE REALITY: It only feeds code thievery...
E.G.-> Hell, a GOOD 1/2 of the "coders" out there now are sourcecode thieves off of SourceForge OR get their answers from Stack Overflow - wtf: That's NOT writing your own code and when you DO that, you actually learn things (instead of pinching others' work & calling it "your own").
* That's 1 thing "oldsters" like myself LITERALLY couldn't do "way back when", & I saw this type of stupidity coming a LONG time ago...
A few asshats around here told me "open source your code and I will do XYZ with it" & I was like "no way you 1/2 ass little weasel - what I do is ACTUALLY MY OWN WORK, SWEAT/CONCENTRATION, & I do NOT owe 'the code thieving likes of you' a DAMN thing - show me you've done something yourself? Maybe, JUST MAYBE, then I'd @ least THINK about it, otherwise? Fuck off!"... & despite "peer review"? There's bugs out the ASS in your stuff in Open SORES... that is a fact.
APK
P.S.=> Say what you "Pro-OpenSORES" weasels will, but the quality of code out there speaks for me, despite "ALL THOSE EYES ON THE CODE" that might as well be BLIND MEN with the shenanigans of the nature I just spoke of going on like MAD for @ least a decade++ now... apk
When I click no to all your bundled crap and still end up with every bit of it and MORE installed, when you have acknowledged it was doing this for months but it would be fixed soon, you deserved to be sued. You are breaking the law in every country in the civilized world. Fuck you.
The logic sometimes isn't profit. Sometimes the logic is being able to show a loss for tax purposes. See also "Hollywood accounting".
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I have noticed over the last few months that there were sourceforge projects I showed an interest in that were binary only. For a time I tried to convince myself the project maintainers were just too busy and they were behind posting the sources. Now I see that we could rename the site, Binary-Forge. I remember clearly that for a long time, SF was the premier site for hosting open source development. I myself developed an open source XML project on SF (xmltools). There is a big difference though between hosting adware, and malware. Personally I had more respect for the mode of operation where the sources were posted, with the appropriate cryptographic hashes, and a polite warning that prepared binaries were included as a courtesy, but the build-it-yourself from sources technique was safer, primarily because you could review every line of the code if desired. Just what made SF the premiere site were the obvious superior features, but topping it off of course was the reputation they earned in the early days. Should someone with the time and resources wish to compete with them now, the hosting meme is very well defined and with SF reputation currently encumbered as it is, they could easily be replaced in the wink of an eye. It makes me sad to see SF come to this, and I can only assume it has happened because the people who had the image in mind of a trustworthy hosting site are now gone, and bean-counters have taken over. It's too bad that short-sightedness makes aberrant practices seem more profitable than retaining the trust and love of the developer community.