SourceForge Debuts New UI and GitHub Sync Tool (sourceforge.net)

SourceForge on Tuesday introduced an overhaul of its website to give it a new look and add new features. Among the most notable additions, the popular repository, which hosts over 430,000 projects and 3.7 million registered developers, said it was creating a GitHub Importer tool which would enable developers to import their GitHub project to SourceForge and also sync their GitHub project file releases on SourceForce so they "can take advantage of the strengths of both platforms." In a blog post, the team wrote:We believe the open source community is always better served when there are multiple options for open source projects to live, and these options are not mutually exclusive. More improvements and new features are on track to be released throughout the year, the team wrote.

Comments

Pop-ups...

[QuietLagoon]

Hopefully they got rid of that annoying pop-up that appears every time I'm sent to the site to download something. There's no way I'd want to use such a site if that is how my visitors would be treated.

Too little, too late

[brendan.robert]

There's literally nothing they can do to rebuild the confidence that was lost, short of just rebranding and building a new community. I don't know of anyone who has still forgiven them for injecting adware into downloads. I agree with them that developers are best served with as many options as possible, and that's why so many people have ditched them years ago. I appreciate the challenge of providing a community free service and having to find affordable ways to keep the lights on. But they botched it. Game over, man. Put a fork in it because it's done.

Re:Too little, too late

[whipslash]

Yeah I didn't like them adding adware to downloads either so I bought SourceForge and removed the adware. Doesn't really matter if we convince anyone else, we're just gonna do right by the 1 million daily users and 430,00 projects there

Re:Too little, too late

[whipslash]

GitHub lost $66 million last year so it's not quite solid yet. There's a lot of active projects committing code on SF despite the fact that there are a lot of inactive ones. We will make it easier to see which ones are active soon.

Re:Too little, too late

[whipslash]

I actually didn't mod him at all. It sucks that some networks still have SourceForge blocked. Hopefully in time that will change but we're just focused on improving the product and catering to our current users. It was a shame what happened to SourceForge in the first place but we had nothing to do with that and part of the reason we bought it was to get rid of the adware

Re:Too little, too late

[whipslash]

Yeah that makes sense to be skeptical of the previous ownership's decisions but we had nothing to do with it. If a building is burning down and ruining the contents inside due to the owner's neglect, do you then fault the person who buys it and puts out the fire?

Re:Too little, too late

[whipslash]

It's not that hard to understand. We are not the ones who were bundling adware. We are the ones who immediately ceased that practice. My analogy is apt.

Re:But they so skeevy

[whipslash]

It's very much end-user focused: provides an intuitive download interface for non-developers, reviews, discovery tools etc. Developers also get detailed download statistics, mailing lists, and more. It's not really a zero-sum game. You can use GH primarily but use the GitHub Sync tool to take advantage of both platforms. There's a good comment from Reddit (u/badsectoracula) I just came across that put it well:

There is one thing that SourceForge does that basically no other site does: it puts a focus on the user side of things. GitHub, GitLab, Gitwhatever, BitBucket, etc focus too much on the developer side to the detriment of the users.

It is a bit hard to explain what i mean, but to take a look check this SF project: right at the top you have a big fat green "Download" button, rating from other users with reviews, number of downloads (so you can judge its popularity), a status indicator (beta here), ways to share it with others and even get notifications when the developer makes any updates. And that is at the "header". Right below you have link for the project's files (downloads, what the user cares about, not a VCS view), support, tickets and even a discussion forum with categories (i really dislike how in GitHub people use the bug tracker as a forum).

Other projects have mailing lists, news, etc. For example in 7zip's project page you get news and a series of screenshots.

As a user you also get to see the license of the project, the supported OSes and the category it is in - after all a particular project might not fit exactly what you need, but other projects in that category might be better choices.

And yes, of course, there is also the code tab where you can browse the repository, but unlike practically every other project hosting site, SourceForge does not impose any specific VCS nor is designed around it. Hell, if you want (and many projects on the site do exactly that) you can just provide source code releases and not use a VCS - or use another site to host the VCS.

Honestly, the amount of information and user focus that SourceForge has is beyond competition. And sadly it seems the vast majority of developers do not really care about their users, because not only SF has lost its popularity (which is understandable considering the actions from their previous owners) but recently i was looking for some sort of "sourceforge-like" software i could install in my own VPS to put my projects and there was nothing. I could find tons of GitHub wannabe clones in every fad language made the last few years (always tied to a single VCS - usually Git - of course) but none that had something as simple as a "Downloads" area.

The closest i've found is CodingTeam, a French "forge" written in PHP. It is actually quite nice (and if i'm honest i like how it looks better than the new "let's quadruple the size of all the things" SourceForge theme) and even has some features i haven't seen in other similar sites like support for translations. But if you look around you'd find pretty much the entire Internet ignoring it - i've only found a single mention on Reddit from 7 years ago that went ignored and no word about it on Hacker News or any other place where programmers meet.

Which, IMO, sucks because more often than not as a user i do not really care about the repository of a project - i care about releases, documentation, discussions, support and all that stuff.

Re:not even at gunpoint

[whipslash]

The old ownership did that and it sucked. That's why I bought SourceForge and removed all the adware.

Re:But they so skeevy

[whipslash]

For non developers the interface is intuitive. Try telling a non-developer to download something from GitHub and SourceForge and see which one they find easier.