

Sourceforge now using "enhanced" (Ask.com) installer for some downloads - voltagex_
http://sourceforge.net/blog/today-we-offer-devshare-beta-a-sustainable-way-to-fund-open-source-software/

======
voltagex_
If you have a sourceforge account, please let the admin of Filezilla know that
this is not very cool:
[https://sourceforge.net/sendmessage.php?touser=156254](https://sourceforge.net/sendmessage.php?touser=156254)

~~~
therealunreal
And don't forget to donate something for all these years of improving and
maintaining FileZilla. [https://filezilla-
project.org/donate.php](https://filezilla-project.org/donate.php)

But you've already donated, right?

~~~
voltagex_
I will be shortly. I'll be interested to see a response from the project admin
first.

Put it this way, if they'd asked for a few bucks and put up a Flattr or a
GitTip, it would have been a no-brainer for me. Flattr especially is really
easy.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Flattr is a way for users to feel good but doesn't really make any useful
amount of money for the publisher/developer (each Flattr is just pennies and
the number shown is the number of Flattrs over all time, years in many cases).
It's more an ad for Flattr than anything else. The space on your site would
make FAR more money serving an ad.

~~~
thecodeore
That depends on the person donating. if the Person as a $10 budget but only
flattr's 2 project then each project would be $4.5

but if they flattr'ed 10 projects each project would only get $0.9

------
dz0ny
Who uses sourceforge? I hope proxy providers will stop supporting sourceforge
entirely. On the other hand I don't care about Windows users, they can have
all Adware on the world, actually they have :P

~~~
JohnTHaller
Millions of people use SourceForge, many without knowing it. It's one of the
only hosts that make available free open source binary download hosting
(Github doesn't, Google Code is discontinuing it).

Most Windows users have no adware at all, but you likely already know that.

~~~
bluehex
Not true re: Github. [https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your-
software](https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your-software)

~~~
JohnTHaller
From the documentation, this seems only geared towards specific ZIPs of what
is already on Github and is discussed as such in all press announcements.
Basically, an easy way to have Acme 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 zips of code alongside each
other as easily accessible zips. Nowhere is it indicated that this is for
binary installer releases (EXE/MSI for Windows or DMG for Mac) or that these
types of installers and their large associated bandwidth requirements are
supported. Is this clarified somewhere else?

~~~
178
from the blog post: "You can also attach binary assets (such as compiled
executables, minified scripts, documentation) to a release. Once published,
the release details and assets are available to anyone that can view the
repository."

------
nolok
Thus losing their last holdout ? I'm not sure what the guys owning sourceforge
are thinking those last few years, but boy do they try their best to kill
their website ...

~~~
commentzorro
They're thinking they want to make enough money to keep the site running.
They've found that begging and running ads prior to downloads just isn't
enough and that this more aggressive approach might help.

Yes, they will lose you. But I suspect they think they'll gain more in
partnerships with popular software than what they loose. Especially if you
were a leech.

------
JohnTHaller
For the curious, this is an optional program at SourceForge being offered to
developers as a way to monetize their work. The developer needs to
specifically request it. SourceForge gets a cut, so does the developer. The
installer is their first stab at this process and is using the bundling
technology from Ask.com. As offer-based installers go, this one is about as
good as it gets. It makes a single offer and has an Accept and Decline button
with the user selecting whichever one they want (not a pre-checked box
accepting the offer above a Next/Continue button). If accepted, the installer
installs the offered software and it gets a standard entry in Windows'
Add/Remove Programs that works as expected. If declined, the installer
continues. The installer then downloads the originally-requested software.

The two issues with the current installer are that (1) it is served in place
of the requested file with no indication that a substitution is made as the
user downloads and (2) it requests admin rights before it starts downloading
the software, which can be a security issue. Roberto (who posted the article)
has stated that they are working on #1 in terms of the text shown on
SourceForge as you select to download and download. As for #2, there may be
some ways to rework the installer so this is not an issue. I'll mention it to
him when I speak to him.

SourceForge has one other revenue-share program with developers where you
place the SourceForge-branded download buttons on your own website that link
to your downloads on SourceForge and you get a small cut of the ad revenue
made from the download page.

If I recall correctly, SourceForge has been losing money for a few years now.
Dice Holdings picked up SourceForge and Slashdot while Geek.com kept
ThinkGeek.com, so they are now separate entities. These new experiments are
attempts to get SourceForge to be self-sustaining/profitable. Ad revenue alone
likely won't cut it.

Unfortunately, Google Code, Github and others don't offer the full breadth of
services that SourceForge does for open source projects. Google Code, Github,
and others have all ditched binary downloads, so SourceForge is one of the
only providers to make binary downloads available to Windows and Mac user at
no charge. This is why SourceForge is popular for real apps (FileZilla,
Pidgin, PortableApps.com, etc) and Github is popular for components (node.js,
jquery, rails, etc). The code zips available at other providers are of no use
to end users.

As full disclosure, I run PortableApps.com, one of SourceForge's largest
projects pushing quite a few TBs of downloads through their mirror network. We
make use of the SF-branded download buttons revenue share program but do not
make use of nor have any plans to use the "enhanced" installers. Everything
I've discussed here is already publicly available, I just thought it would be
handy to have in one place.

~~~
thecodeore
Just wanted to add, since many people dont know, last month GitHub added a new
feature called "Releases" that does allow you to attach binaries for projects

[https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your-
software](https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your-software)

~~~
JohnTHaller
In all the documentation and press materials, they're still referred to as
zips, though. Do you know if they support proper uploads and downloads of EXE,
MSI and DMGs directly? Github used to support that a while back and purposely
disabled it. Google Code has recently begun disabling it due to 'abuse'.

