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SourceForge Eliminates DevShare Program (sourceforge.net)
SourceForge has officially eliminated its DevShare program. The DevShare program delivered installer bundles as part of the download for participating projects. We want to restore our reputation as a trusted home for open source software, and this was a clear first step towards that. We are more interested in doing the right thing than making extra short-term profit. This is just the first step in a number of improvements we will outline in the coming weeks. SourceForge and Slashdot were acquired in late January by BIZX.
The majority of the good open source apps have moved to GitHub over this, and user trust in the site is dead. I know myself and a number of people I know don't go there anymore, hell, uBlock even blocks it by default.
"Making a extra short term profit" FAIL
We just purchased the site a week ago. I think your anger is misdirected.
Nobody else has said so, so let me say: Thanks for trying to fix things, New Management. I appreciate efforts like these. Keep it up.
The others are probably right about it being too late to make much difference, of course. Broken trust is a mother. And none of us are really sure how reputable the new bosses are, of course. But I feel it's important to recognize and encourage any steps in the right direction. So thanks again.
First, good on you to start fixing things in the first week. I know that I miss the days of being able to download things off of sourceforge.
Secondly, do you have an overarching philosophy you can share about how you plan on running your new acquisitions. I know a mission statement is often a lame thing, but I think something that clearly explained your vision, and that people could judge your future actions by, would be nice..
Your ad here. Ask me how!
No bullshit. I'll really send you money. I remember loving sourceforge. If you have a gofundme, or paypal account, or something like that, I'll send you $5 to help offset the lost revenue from that program you scrapped. There are people out there who will help support those who do the right thing, even if they're companies or for-profit corporations, or whatever.
Give me my "Turn this ad off because you've got good Karma" option back, and there's another $10 in it for you.
It's been 2 1/2 years since I've posted. I see the potential in this for something I loved to come back. So I'll post now.
Who else will support these guys?
The goal is to hire non-white sales people. Github's boss has declared that she can't even interview white people. Worse, she has declared that white WOMEN are the enemy. Racists are racists, no matter which race they are denigrating.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Hey, can you like give them a minute or two? They just bought the fucking site a week or two ago. They've done more good in that time than Dice did in the last several years. It's going to take some time for them to remove all the Dice fuckups.
You have no idea how glad this makes me. I've had that site blacklisted for years. The first time it had shitware bundled in I was done. Thank you for just straight up buying the whole goddamned thing and fixing it.
You do understand this is a new crew right? Like if you had bought sourceforge a year ago, and then immediately fixed the shitware problem, you'd expect people to be happy with that, right? Well that is what happened.
Really? Ok, put it in site ToS for both publishers and the users/downloaders, that 1) you will never never NEEEVER bundle ANYTHING or in ANY WAY try to alter the files placed there by uploaders/project owners. 2) also NEVER you will post ADs that could be mistaken for The Download, and in addition all ads will be very clearly marked e.g. with red border and red text saying "3rd party advertisement". And any banner/AD will lead first to outgoing banner saying clearly "You are now leaving sourceforge.net! and going to xyz.com - we take no responsibility for that site or any downloads on it" 3) of course you can never delete or take over a project then e.g. to kick out legitimate owner and push own "enriched" versions Put that it in ToS and guarantee e.g. up to 10,000$ per project damages. Then we could talk. Btw. anyway what imo could be more interesting now, would be an guthub.com clone, just like github but without the SJW nuttery that results in censorship that is going in there. How ever I doubt you could do it, as Slashdot seems quite leftist too, with frequest bullshit stories about "closing the technical gap" and other anti-white-male whiny propagana bullshit. But sure - feel free to impress us on these fields, we will see.
Honestly, I don't understand your viewpoint. They've made progress towards improving both sites they bought - this is a huge step forward for Sourceforge, and Slashdot's quality of news has drastically increased. We're actually getting News for Nerds, and I for one have greatly enjoyed reading stories that are actually pretty interesting for once. They've answered many questions patiently, they've taken the abuse expected from a cynical community, and Whiplash and Co. haven't done anything yet that would make my eyebrows raise. Why would you write such a puerile response for a site whose old owners have left, and a new owner is actually trying to breathe some life back into it? This is a good thing, and I'd love some competition to Github. If BizX turns into what Dice was, then we'll talk, but so far they've shown that they actually do care about the site and are interested in our community. Hell, if you look through, you can see that Whiplash has actually read a lot of posts here, or at least responded to some that aren't close to the top.
Frankly, Mr. Freeman, you are coming off as a troll and that doesn't help anyone. A clause against backdoor additions or advertisement bundling would be nice, but that whole damages spiel is unnecessary, and you're in no position to make demands of someone who will host your programs, maintain a site, foot the monthly internet bill, and provide tools to help you with your open source project for free.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Slashdot has turned into an incredibly angry, toxic environment over the past 5 years (which is pretty visible in this thread and, IMO, part of the reason why the site was/is suffering), so I dug up my old account and logged in just to give you some positive feedback. It looks like your heads and hearts are in the right place and it would be great to see Slashdot restored to its former glory. SourceForge could definitely become a major competitor to GitHub (for one, I think GH is too expensive) so that's one avenue to go down.
I'm already returning to Slashdot more regularly and it's only been a week since you took the reins - so keep it up.
This is Slashdot, home of the perpetually dissatisfied user. If Microsoft, Mozilla, Sony, or whoever simultaneously ended world hunger, cured cancer, and gave you shiny red balloon, they'd bitch about the color.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Even when that 7-digit user is the new *OWNER* of /. ???
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
Of the stories on the front page the only ones I wouldn't consider "news for nerds" would be the sexual misconduct case and the Jeep gearshift story.
Believe it or not there are other types of engineers here besides folks who program for a living. The jeep gearshift story is about an engineering/design screwup and personally I find it quite interesting. Judging by the number of comments so did others. That sort of story definitely fits slashdot and would have before Dice took over. Furthermore the motto of Slashdot is "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters." Nerds come in many forms and I certainly am one but not of the IT variety. Stuff that Matters extends beyond IT.
I agree however that the stories seem to be more focused lately so that is a good thing in my opinion. Of course the number of comments is still WAY down from 10 years ago. Used to be that slashdot attracted a fairly elite technical crowd. That hasn't been the case for a few years now for the most part. I still find it interesting but not like I once did.