
GitHub, Collaboration, and Haters - thefox
http://sourceforge.net/blog/github-collaboration-and-haters/
======
novas0x2a
While I don't really approve of the anti-sourceforge attitude, I do understand
it; when SF had essentially a monopoly on open source project storage, they
chose to milk it and rest on their laurels rather than improve themselves.
People complained about how SF broke wget with their download portals for
something like four years before SF did something about it. SF's forced review
of every project creation (and their gigantic delay in doing so) had a strong
chilling effect on open source project creation in general.

A lazy monopoly has a way of generating extreme hatred due to the impotent
rage of the people that use it because they have no other option. SF may have
drastically improved in the presence of competition, but it's no surprise that
some people are still angry.

~~~
lurker14
Wait, wait, wait.

SF has a" monopoly" and a "chilling effect" that makes you "angry", because
their completely free service was not good enough for someone?

What does Sourceforge owe anyone?

~~~
akkartik
No, _you_ wait.

Sourceforge owes nobody anything. And we don't owe it anything either. So
don't mind us if we don't help fix SF.

Github is as 'completely free' as sourceforge. Firefox is as 'completely free'
as internet explorer. So yes, it does make sense to use 'completely free' and
'not good enough' in the same sentence.

------
mhartl
Three years ago I attended an "open-source CEO" dinner, at which I was seated
between the CEOs of SourceForge and CollabNet (founder and principal proponent
of the Subversion VCS). I asked the CollabNet CEO what he thought about Git,
and he was dismissive, indicating that Subversion had already won. I then
asked the SourceForge CEO if he knew about GitHub; he was vaguely familiar
with them, but appeared utterly unconcerned. I thought to myself, _All the
battles have been fought and lost, and these guys don't even know there's a
war._

~~~
imroot
Not really surprised there. I've worked for both CEOs of SourceForge and
Collabnet (the software that I worked with, SourceForge Enterprise Edition was
purchased by CollabNet in 2007). CollabNet's CEO seems to think that
Subversion will change the world [engineering's had a DVCS integration into
SFEE (now teamforge) for the last two years, but product management wouldn't
allow it to be included], and SourceForge is nothing more than a media company
that's bootstrapped by thinkgeek.net.

------
cgbystrom
The reason why GitHub has become so popular is due to the fact they put code
and developers first. Surfing to a repo doesn't bring some overview or ads
page.

Opening a repo actually show useful stuff for me as a developer. The source is
there together with an optionally inlined README file, rendered with popular
micro markups. Then add the ease of forking and you clearly get something
people really like. This style of presentation isn't of course for everybody.
But GitHub chose to target developers above end-users.

GitHub could have been "SVNHub" or "hghub" for all I care, the technology is
secondary in this case (but close behind).

~~~
Joakal
In a way, you're right. However GitHub's model is subscriptions fund the free
yet small open repositories whereas SourceForge's model is advertisement (I
can't find a way to on SF though).

So naturally, GitHub had to appeal for subscribers. While for SF, I always
thought ads was stupid due to the educated demographic that would likely have
adblock.

~~~
jbk
Most of the people who go on SF, are people downloading popular open source
software binaries. See
<http://sourceforge.net/top/toplist.php?type=downloads_week>

And those people are not the educated demographic that have adblock...

------
j_baker
SourceForge is a business, not a charity project. If they were providing this
service out of the kindness of their hearts, I'd absolutely agree that people
should knock it off.

However, sourceforge is doing this to make money. What business owner with any
common sense hears customers complaining about them and tells them it's rude?
If customers complain about your service, you empathize with them and find out
what you can do to improve.

Whatever respect for sourceforge I had just went away. You can't just ignore
customer complaints because you're open source.

~~~
SwellJoe
SourceForge is both a business and a project...the project was created because
the people behind it wanted to build something for the Open Source community.
They succeeded, and achieved remarkable things. If you weren't around the Open
Source community ten or more years ago, you might be forgiven for not giving
them their due credit. But, I was around, and I'm grateful for what
SourceForge has provided, and still provides, the projects I've worked on over
the years. If they got lost on the way to finding a workable business model,
or if they failed to keep pace with the rapidly-changing Open Source
landscape, that's certainly worth talking about...but heaping hate on people
who've tried to do good things for the community for _years_ is low and nasty
and it's something I don't like to see.

Most of the people who use, and have used, SourceForge have never paid for the
service. If someone hasn't paid for it, and hasn't contributed to it in any
real way, I don't see how it's right for them to complain about it in an
obnoxious way (angrily on twitter or reddit or whatever). Send a patch to fix
the problem, submit a ticket, etc. But, spewing anger without having done
anything to help just makes someone a cancer on the Open Source community. If
you don't like SourceForge, don't use it. But, don't pile hate onto someone
that's done good things and continues to do good things.

I absolutely understand where the SF folks are coming from. Sometimes, I feel
this way, too. When you have a project with millions of users, there's going
to be someone who can't help but heap hate and anger on you; it's human
nature, I guess. In this case, though, it seems even worse...because folks are
kicking SourceForge when they're already on the ground trying to figure out
WTF to do to regain some of their old luster.

I'm pretty much certain they aren't talking about "customer complaints" here.
I'm sure they don't mind that kind of thing; they've been dealing with it for
over a decade. I'm pretty sure what they're talking about are the "SourceForge
sucks!" type rants about how evil SourceForge is. And, on that count, they're
right to be upset.

~~~
j_baker
I was around. Look, giving away open source software might have been a big
deal back then. It isn't now. Lots of companies release open source software,
up to and including open sourcing their entire product.

The reality of the matter is that SourceForge is a dinosaur that needs to die.
They may have once been great, but they aren't anymore.

Say what you will about the trolls, but they're right. And sourceforge has no
one to blame but themselves.

Not to mention that it's our right to say whatever we want on our twitter
stream, regardless of if we've paid for or tried to help the object of our
complaints. Sourceforge doesn't owe me anything, nor do I owe them anything.

~~~
SwellJoe
_Look, giving away open source software might have been a big deal back then.
It isn't now. Lots of companies release open source software, up to and
including open sourcing their entire product._

That's not what I'm grateful to SourceForge for. I'm grateful for the
_terabytes_ of transfer they've provided my projects over the years. They've
also effectively hosted mailing lists and websites that receive tremendous
traffic. I have my doubts that github could handle all of those aspects of
that kind of service, even now that they've grown up. I suspect they'd have a
lot of the same growing pains SourceForge experienced.

 _The reality of the matter is that SourceForge is a dinosaur that needs to
die._

Really? You have no concern at all for the thousands of projects that still
rely on SourceForge infrastructure?

I don't think I'm ever going to be able to see eye to eye with you on this
one.

 _Not to mention that it's our right to say whatever we want on our twitter
stream, regardless of if we've paid for or tried to help the object of our
complaints._

Yes, it's your right to say anything you want. But, bitching without doing
anything positive makes you a drain on the community, rather than a help.
Bitch all you want about problems; but unless you're helping solve them, I
reserve the right to view you (very) negatively because of it.

------
rauljara
I haven't posted anything bad about sourceforge, had missed the controversy
they referred to. I totally agree with everything the author said (and thought
she said it very well). However, I have to admit that when I saw the title of
the article and the domain name (before I read the article) I could feel
myself gearing up to get angry at sourceforge and defend github.

I can totally relate to people who root for one technology to win and trash
another, because I totally root for technologies all the time. I get really
annoyed when a "bad" technology comes out with a good feature I wish the
technology I was rooting for had. Which is kind of insane when I think about
it. This post was a good reminder about how irrational that rooting and
fanboyism is. I will have to be more mindful of that stuff, because it really
makes me blind sometimes.

~~~
cicero
I think it is only natural to have favorite technologies, whether it's an OS,
editor, language, or even automobile brand. I think it is also fine to point
out advantages of one solution over another because it helps others when they
need to make a choice. I think all of this can be done in a rational manner
without fanboyism.

I would like to see more rational discourse, not only in the realm of
technology, but also in politics. It is seldom a question of A is awesome and
B is crap. Often the comparisons are complex, and the right choice may have
some dependence on circumstance. Or in the case of politics, party A may have
a good position on some issues, and a bad position on others.

People have a tendency to choose a side and fight all-out for their side as
right and all others as wrong. We used to do this with race or religion, and
now we're doing it with other things. However, to successfully deal with the
problems in our world, we need to rise above such simplistic thinking and
realize that in our big complicated world, there is often a need for multiple
approaches. And even if one alternative is truly superior to another, we have
to realize that the superiority might not be clear to everyone, so we need to
learn patience with those who may for whatever reason make the inferior
choice. We also need to have the humility to admit that there might even be
something we can learn from the other side.

------
tlrobinson
While I agree the hate is unnecessary, calling out random Twitter users in a
company blog post isn't very classy. It comes across as a petty attempt at
revenge.

~~~
aashay
I think they were trying to cite concrete examples, not exercise any form of
revenge. It's not like they called them names or anything.

~~~
trustfundbaby
still seems petty.

~~~
walexander
I think they were going for "funny". It worked, imo.

------
CGamesPlay
A note to all startups: this is not how you should respond to brand criticism.
SF.net and GitHub are in competition, and a heartfelt blog post does not make
your product better. Spend your time iterating, and make something that is
actually better for your customers. GNOME didn't get to the point it's at
today by saying "KDE is fine, but GNOME is open source too! Same team!"

~~~
MBlume
seriously. anyone reading this without having heard of github or sourceforge
would still be able to read between the lines and understand that

a) everyone agrees github is kicking sourceforge's ass, including the folks at
sourceforge.

b) no one expects this to change, including the folks at sourceforge.

------
jcampbell1
I always smile a little bit when I see the force of creative destruction.
Kudos to the guys at github who ignored the threat of google and built a
business that is profitable and beating established incumbents.

I am sure the folks at sourceforge have their hearts in the right place, but a
tarnished brand is a tarnished brand. They could launch a better product than
github tomorrow, but I'll always have the frustration of trying to use wget on
SF in the back of my mind.

------
bitboxer
Sourceforge had his time. As MySpace had his time, too. They where cool a few
years ago and where the best thing that could happen to the internet, but we
moved away from those for better solutions. Solutions that weren't possible
without those sites. I am very thankfull that Sourceforge existed. I hosted my
first projects there, too.

Good bye and please stop crying like a baby about the hate you are getting.
You have two options: make your site as easy to use as github or continue
dying. Crying publicly is none of those :) .

------
luigi
Overly defensive. The existence of haters on Twitter doesn't merit a blog
post.

------
holman
We're definitely in agreement at GitHub. This industry, like every other
industry, isn't a zero-sum game; plenty of growth to be had for everyone. This
is a nice post, and it's been fun seeing the stuff SF has been building in the
last year or so in particular.

------
timtadh
Honestly, I think that SourceForge used to be _easier_ to use than it is now.
When it had its old interface circa (2002-2005 ish) I could find the
information and do the tasks I wanted to do. It is difficult for me to find
/anything/ on SourceForge these days, when I am forced to use it at all.

SourceForge was (and perhaps is) a great place for open source. I don't think
it was a "lazy monopoly" or even a "monopoly" at all. There were always
alternatives. Always other places one could go to host code and share code.
When it was the most popular site, it was the best site. Now it is simply not
the best site. I am super productive on Github, and unless something 5x better
comes along I don't think I will move off of Github.

------
pwang
There is definitely a social scene in geekdom now with its own zeitgeist that
is independent of underlying intellectual factors. Using the terms from Zen
and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, geeks used to inhabit just the
intellectual plane (although like any gathering of people, there will be some
social aspects to their behavior).

Nowadays, with so many self-promotion and socialization tools out there (and
which capture so much of our attention), geekdom is as much a social
phenomenon as an intellectual one.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Quality.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Jesus, you can't make an intelligent reference here without some judgemental
unread dufus voting you down. This isn't the first time--I've had enough of
this HN.

------
moe
I'm firmly with the haters on this one.

They chose to ignore their community for the better part of a decade. And now
that their ad-revenue declines they're suddenly "on our side"?

As far as I am concerned they can take their whiny blog-post and shove it.

------
dmoney
Here's a reason for SourceForge hate. At least as of a couple weeks ago, when
you go to download a file, you are shown a survey (as a sort of ad). There is
no indication that the survey is optional, and initially I thought it was
required. If you ignore the survey you can still download the file, and I was
able to figure that out eventually. A less experienced user wouldn't be so
lucky, thinking that the survey is required, thus revealing personal or
business information that they shouldn't have to.

------
St-Clock
Yes, SourceForge sat on their "monopoly" and did not innovate. Yes, they got
complacent. But they were so ahead of their time! If I remember correctly,
SourceForge even used to offer a compiler farm so you could try to compile
your library/program under different environments.

Their mistakes benefited to all new services and competitors. If GitHub had
been the first to offer this kind of service, they may have committed some of
SF mistakes.

------
aashay
Personally I don't get why there's so much negativity. I love GitHub just as
much as the next guy, but I don't see why that makes SourceForge insignificant
or irrelevant. Haters gonna hate, I guess :(

~~~
masklinn
> Personally I don't get why there's so much negativity.

I'm guessing a significant portion of it comes from how terrible the
SourceForge experience has been for a very, very long time (I don't know if
it's changed, I haven't had to actually use sourceforge in a long time):
insufferably slow, brain-dead logical layout of project pages, UI complexity,
...

The kind of feeling which comes from _having_ to use a crappy tool for a long
time does not go away easily.

~~~
46Bit
Would tend to agree. This new generation of repo sites for the most part has
learnt a lot of lessons about how to do things. In some ways, linking to
individual tweets feels a bit like bitching at people - perhaps
understandable, but not really doing anything but making them seem upset.

------
kierank
There are some aspects that SF still do a lot better than the competition on.
Nobody is even close to competing with the speed and breadth of their mirrors.

~~~
VMG
I've never hand bandwidth trouble with either github or google code. With SF I
get an arcane 2001-Era dialog where I choose from 12 options that don't tell
me anything - just imagine what this is like for an normal end user.

In any case, bandwith and storage cost falls faster than executable sizes
grow, so in a few years this will be a non-issue for competitors even if you
assume that it is an issue at the moment.

Edit: Githubs download expierience:

<https://github.com/mirrors/linux-2.6>, click on downloads in upper left
corner, click 3.0-rc1, downloading 115mb and my bandwidth is saturated at
2MB/s.

------
eliben
I wonder why neither the original link nor this SF blog post mention BitBucket
- I think they give a pretty good, GitHub-like experience, just with
Mercurial. Both are definitely more pleasant to use than SF

------
shareme
You want code examples to learn, you want people to talk to as developers, etc
search github..

SF is of the same banal cabal as java.net who make the mistake that they own
the community. Github assumes that they must earn their role in the
community..big effing difference!

~~~
sitkack
I almost made a snarky comment on the sf comment section about how they aren't
the most unpopular kid, there is always java.net!

------
summitpush
Very well said.

