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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.
Do you understand we just bought the site last week? We didn't see a dime from the DevShare program since we weren't the owners. The first thing we did when we purchased the site is remove the program.
We just purchased the site a week ago. I think your anger is misdirected.
Never understood why it was killed. It was a great way to find out about new and interesting projects/ideas.
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.
It is a long and proud tradition here to not read the article. The summary given does not mention the sale, so it is a pretty easy mistake to make.
You're right. I thought the Related Links sufficed. I'll update it.
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!
Our overarching philosophy for SourceForge is that it needs to be a trusted destination free of any sort of malicious adware or deceptive advertising. We are committed to achieving this. Eliminating DevShare was the first step. Establishing SourceForge as a trusted open source destination is our main goal.
It's going to be a Via Dolorosa for you guys. SourceForge got properly Volkswagen'd by Dice and it's even blocked by uBlock by default. If, however, you are truly going to try to purge SF from all its evil, please consider streamlining the UI while at it. It's a mess at its current state.
-SR
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?
APK's days are numbered. Also we're talking SourceForge here
Yes.
Holy crap, an editor that fixed an error in TFS!
That's bigger news than the article itself.
Thanks for the support. Keep your $15 for now. We're doing this because we want these sites to live up to their former potential, and if we do this correctly, then legitimate advertising dollars will support the business instead of bundled warez and deceptive ads. Hope you keep posting. We will definitely look at the karma/ad thing though.
APK's days are numbered.
I think we were just hoping you'd mute him, but that works too.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Also the "wrongdoing" was committed by the previous owners, not us
It's only been a week. I think you'll see in the near future we are serious about rebuilding trust.
Cool. Well we just eliminated bundled installers so look at it however you please
Me? My name is Logan Abbott and I am the president of SourceForge. Check my twitter at @loganabbott and the slashdot icon next to my name
Stuff like this will be addressed in our upcoming TOS.
1) we won't bundle anything. however you should be aware some project owners bundle their own incarnations that are not beneficial to users 2) we are removing any deceptive advertising 3) right
I've been lurking here since 98. If they can maintain half the engagement and clean up SF as mentioned, I'll keep visiting.
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
35 million monthly unique users say otherwise.
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.
We're gonna do the work. Feedback welcome
Off topic I know but I wanted to say I appreciate the changes that have happened to slashdot as well. I look at the front page and there is only 1 story I would remove (The Anthropology sexual abuse one) and the rest are ones that I was actually interested to read about. I compare that to a fortnight ago and the difference is massive.
So thank you Whiplash.
And if you are interested these are the reasons why I would remove the Anthropology story
* Click bait headline - There is no way a single incident would "Rock" an entire global sector or industry.
* It isn't related to science, technology or anything that I would call Nerd worthy. You could change the word Anthropology for anything and the story doesn't change. It is a people story.
* Read the comments. There isn't anything to really discuss. Either you think the guy was a fuckwit or you think someone over reacted. There is no grey zones to discuss. No expert that could come in and give me a nugget of information that I didn't know.
* Sciencehabit is a posting bot. He / She / It isn't part of this community. I suspect there is a multi-poster somewhere with their credentials loaded into it and the only thing they are doing is trying to drive traffic to sciencemag.org having posted the same stuff to every site they could.
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.
You do realize Sourceforge, like Slashdot, is under new ownership now, right? What they've done here is show that they are willing and able to listen to the community, unlike previous owners of the property. Just sayin'.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
You're very welcome
So then it did restore their reputation one iota.
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."
I am encouraged with our new overlords!!!
You know that's right, n00b.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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
Slashdot has turned into an incredibly angry, toxic environment over the past 5 years
It seems to me that almost everywhere on the internet is like this now, I used to post and comment on various different sites, these days I very seldom bother because people are more concerned with point scoring and arguing than actual discussion. This time I wanted to comment as another fairly old UID who is intrigued to see BZIX does with /. I'm glad to see you're working on fixing sourceforge's tarnished reputation good luck with your future endeavours ^_^
Simplicity lies within chaos
Please do make a donation option. I use an Ad Blocker because I find the ad business toxic. I will not turn it off. Not even for Slashdot. But I do want /. to earn a living.
Fixed
I'm not sure I like the new direction Slashdot is going. :-)
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.
Kids these days...
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
Never underestimate the potential for the developer community to change their minds (or the hosting company to 'add extra value' at any time).
Github may be the current darling, but I recall when it was Google Code and Freshmeat. I even remember Codeplex for all the Microsoft stuff and even that now seems to be migrating to github.
So keeping Sourceforge going, and preparing it with some much nicer navigation and website functionality would go a long way towards being ready for when github stops being cool and starts to look pretty crappy. If SF could provide the kind of fancy management portal for a product with wikis and decent bug trackers, and possibly the return of their old compile farm, it'd compete favourably with github and we'd be free of a dangerous monoculture.
So I welcome our new source control and discussion overlords, lets hope they return to their glory days.
You guys need to advertise that far and wide. The reputation was earned from the scam tactics of the previous owners, and nobody will come back to see if it has changed if you dont make it a core part of your advertising.
The new sourceforge, under new management and it is back to the pure form with nothing shady going on.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.