
SourceForge Acquisition and Future Plans - tdurden
https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-future-plans/
======
DonHopkins
Rosencrantz: Did you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box
with a lid on it?

Guildenstern: No.

Rosencrantz: Nor do I, really. It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean, one
thinks of it like being alive in a box. One keeps forgetting to take into
account the fact that one is dead, which should make all the difference,
shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never _know_ you were in a box, would you? It
would be just like you were asleep in a box. Not that I'd like to sleep in a
box, mind you. Not without any air. You'd wake up dead for a start, and then
where would you be? In a box. That's the bit I don't like, frankly. That's why
I don't think of it. Because you'd be helpless, wouldn't you? Stuffed in a box
like that. I mean, you'd be in there forever, even taking into account the
fact that you're dead. It isn't a pleasant thought. Especially if you're dead,
really. Ask yourself, if I asked you straight off, "I'm going to stuff you in
this box. Now, would you rather be alive or dead?" naturally, you'd prefer to
be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a
chance, at least. You could lie there thinking, "Well, at least I'm not dead.
In a minute somebody is going to bang on the lid, and tell me to come out."

[bangs on lid]

Rosencrantz: "Hey you! What's your name? Come out of there!"

Guildenstern: [long pause] I think I'm going to kill you.

~~~
EvanPlaice
Bravo

------
joeld42
I wonder how many of the HN readers don't remember how amazing sourceforge
used to be. It was github before there was github. Easy, solid, project
hosting for open source projects when that was often the main barrier to a
good project getting more widely known.

I think it's one of the earlier examples of why "grow userbase now, figure out
how to monetize it later" can be a bad idea. There was a time when (perhaps) a
majority of open source projects were hosted on sourceforge, and I think they
assumed that that would just translate to profit (or sustainability)
eventually. When that didn't happen, and then they had to compete with Google
Code, it began the slide down the slippery slope to the spam-infested site
that it is today.

I hope that's changing. We need more options for hosting software projects, we
can't rely on github being benevolent forever.

~~~
kayamon
I don't remember sourceforge ever being amazing. From day one it was just CVS,
with a terrible UI on top of it.

The only thing ever good to say about it was that it was free.

~~~
Ixio
The UI wasn't great but how many reliable alternatives were there at the time?

I've never used SF to host something but if so many big open source project
used them in the past they had to be doing more things right than just being
free (that last one turned to be tricky in the end).

~~~
scrollaway
> _The UI wasn 't great but how many reliable alternatives were there at the
> time?_

None. But when Github came around, there were also no reliable alternatives at
the time (other than google code which sucked as well) and it was still a
thousand times better than everything else.

Sourceforge was never "amazing". It was never "great". It used to be decent
and the only player in the game. When Github came around, it quickly lost both
those attributes.

I don't know why people fondly remember the "old sourceforge days" \- I
remember those days and they sucked.

Don't let the lack of competition forgive how bad something is.

~~~
tmd83
I wasn't a coder in the Sourceforge glory days. But it was a great place for a
frequent user of opensource software. I remember a lot of small projects only
existence was their Sourceforge presence.

So Github might have provided a lot of new things but Sourceforge was really
amazing at what it provided, when it provided.

Being the only player also means nobody gave small opensource projects any
home when they did.

~~~
icebraining
It wasn't really the only player; BerliOS and GNU Savannah appeared right
around that time, and Launchpad isn't much younger. That said, they weren't
really any better, in my opinion. At least SF had a bunch of mirrors, which
was helpful back then.

~~~
ksherlock
SourceForge started out as a 20% time type project at VA Linux/Research. It
was originally open source but went closed source when they pivoted from
hardware to SourceForge. Savannah was a fork from before it was closed up.

------
unimpressive
You know, I'm a little disappointed with the HN commentariat. They at least
_ostensibly_ seem to be making a good faith effort to improve the site and
people are responding with out and out venom. Yeah, I'm skeptical too but
that's no reason to be so vicious.

~~~
loganabbott
Thanks for the support.

~~~
Eridrus
I don't know if you guys will be able to turn it around, but I appreciate the
fact that you're going to stop people getting infected with crapware by
discontinuing past owners' practices.

I wish you the best of luck though because it would be doubly sad if you guys
sold it to someone who put all the crapware right back.

~~~
loganabbott
Thanks. We are not planning on selling. In this for the long haul

~~~
bencollier49
If you can implement the features which Github has been failing to provide for
so long (as per the various polemics which appear on here from time to time),
then you could be well in business. Just need to distance yourselves well
enough from the previous owners. Good luck!

------
MegaDeKay
At least they are making steps in the right direction...

"Our first order of business was to terminate the “DevShare” program. As of
last week, the DevShare program was completely eliminated. 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."

~~~
loganabbott
Thanks for the support. Yes we got rid of DevShare within a week of acquiring
SourceForge. I think people will realize quickly we are serious about turning
it around.

~~~
gedy
You're getting a lot of snark here, but wanted to say that you coming here and
addressing is really helpful in proving you're serious.

I have fond memories of SF and keeping some completion in the market is always
good.

~~~
loganabbott
Thanks. We are serious and I do appreciate all the feedback here. Agreed about
the competition part as well.

~~~
chris_wot
Fronting up and participating here counts for a lot. Thanks :-)

------
biot
If you were made CEO of SourceForge, what would you do to make it relevant
again? Assume shuttering the site isn't an option and you have to do your
damnedest to make it work. What would it take? Beyond just pure, clean code
and projects are there any services which sites like GitHub don't offer that
might entice developers back, regardless of cost?

The only things I can come up with are services like a free server farm for
built-in continuous integration and deployment. Maybe strike deals with
Heroku, AWS, Azure, Google, Digital Ocean, etc. to make one-click setup and
deployments from the project a reality. If they can demonstrate
trustworthiness (some sort of trusted third-party auditing?) and rapidly
execute on delivering massive value, they just might be able to regain some of
what they lost.

~~~
loganabbott
Well, I'll assume shuttering the site isn't an option. Be careful also because
apparently using the word "the" before the word "site" is taboo to some
commenters here. We're going to do the obvious stuff first: get rid of bundled
software (done), get rid of deceptive advertising, improve features (like
rolling out https, done), and then we will look at ideas like you mentioned. I
appreciate the feedback.

~~~
supersan
Yes, you would gain a massive chunk of traffic if you can get your site spam
and malware free. There are still some projects like mp3gain, etc that are
useful.

Right now uBlock won't even let me visit Sourceforge without adding it to my
exceptions list (probably for a good reason).

~~~
loganabbott
Yes the malware is gone. Now what's left is somewhat deceptive ads in some
cases (ads with download button images in them). These are served
programmatically from ad networks but we're building a system where they can
be reported and acted on right away. Hopefully we'll get uBlock to come
around.

~~~
JoshTriplett
All of your competitors have zero ads. Are you exploring potential revenue
models other than advertisement?

~~~
loganabbott
Yes but nothing in the way of unwanted bundled software or other models that
would upset developers or users.

------
NicoJuicy
Props for Logan Abbott, I don't think it's easy dealing with some comments
over here. I wish people could see what it is. He's taking a risk trying to
turn SF arround. He knows what it was and i'm curious how he is going to
improve it over time. Good luck with that.

It's going to be exciting times for open source ( gitlab, github, SF have had
soms announcements the last days). I use github and gitlab for separate
reasons right know and SF mostly for legacy apps. I think it would be
interesting to see gitlab and SF working together, as they are both having
some overlapping visions I suppose.

PS. Hi Sytse, what are you using to watch the web for mentions of gitlab? :-)

~~~
anon12345690
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11097873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11097873)

------
pbnjay
Too little too late. While there are certainly plenty of rarely-updated
packages still on SF, many of the good active ones have already left. They'll
need significant investment in order to turn things around quickly enough and
bring users back. Somewhat hard to believe the ROI will work out though...

~~~
loganabbott
We will invest what we have to to rebuild trust.

~~~
ohyeshedid
Removal of DevShare, adding HTTPS, and removal of all the deceptive
advertising is a step in the right direction. The next step is to reach out to
all the blacklist providers you're listed on and get removed. You guys are
shitlisted all over the place, and for good reasons that may no longer apply.

~~~
loganabbott
Yes you're absolutely right, and we will 100%.

------
sbuttgereit
I suspect the new management team of SourceForge and Slashdot will do their
very best to right past ills and turn the tide.

However, it's not a bet I'd be making. SourceForge is still home for some file
distribution and, perhaps issue management, (thinking binaries) for a
surprising number of projects... But for a lot of them actual development
activities, the life blood of these projects, are mostly focused on github. In
a sense, SourceForge is just a legacy to be dealt with. For SourceForge to
come back in any meaningful way, they 1) have to do some serious modernizing
and 2) github has to seriously screw up: probably rather moreso than the Dear
GitHub issues.

As for Slashdot, I came to HN because of the poor quality of moderation and
the juvenile quality of the community on Slashdot nowadays. Perhaps it was
always like that and I'm just older now... But it seems to not be the site I
originally grew to love in the 90's. Last year I'd had enough and I don't see
any need to go back now that I read HN.

~~~
chris_wot
It was always like that. When it started many of us were much, much younger. I
was 18! It was always a troll magnet, hell the GNAA started there.

Unfortunately for Slashdot, most of us have grown up while it doesn't seem to
have. I can't really see how you can change that culture, all I can think is
you would have to do it very, very carefully and slowly.

That said, slashdot is in a better state than SourceForge.

~~~
sbuttgereit
Yeah, you're right; I was in my mid-20's, but you're spot on. I think in the
past the story moderation was better so there wasn't even so much draw to look
at the comments. I got to looking at the comments as the interesting links
went down. You're right about the difficulty in changing the formula. People

I also agree that Slashdot is in much better shape than SourceForge. While
it's distasteful, they do have readers still. If the new buyers got it for the
right price it might make sense to salvage Slashdot and tear down SourceForge;
but sounds like they're taking the decidedly more risky approach of trying to
save both.

------
kup0
Might be too-little too-late, but anything that reduces adware/malware
installation possibility is a good thing.

It may not be enough to save SF, but at least it's going in a better direction
now. Hopefully they will make other significant improvements too.

~~~
loganabbott
Yes we plan to. Rolled out https a few days ago as well.

------
chrisvxd
Almost all the comments here seem to be comparing SourceForge to GitHub, but
(pre-DevShare) I always liked sourceforge as a consumer site, which is clearly
not GitHub's area. Sure, there were some dev-orientated projects, but what
made it great for me was the huge library of free, opensource and ACCESSIBLE
consumer-facing software, like GIMP.

Then again, this is HN.

~~~
MaikuMori
Is it not? You can have GitHub pages for your project if you wish. Static
website with no ads or malware added.

Sure it's not like editing couple input boxes, but SF UX never was good. Even
as developer I found navigating SF painful (back then when it was the primary
hosting location). I can't imagine it was much better for the average user.

I applaud the commitment, but I think SF should remain dead. It must be a
lesion for anyone considering similar actions. The trust is non-existent,
there are better alternatives and the world has moved on.

I think the best course of action is to put that commitment and people into a
new name, better product and help those few projects still hosted on SF to
migrate.

~~~
loganabbott
SourceForge still receives 35 million visitors per month so it'd have to "die"
to "remain dead". We're going to focus on ridding it of everything that hurt
its reputation, and we're already on our way. We're also going to focus on
supporting the tens of thousands of developers that rely on SourceForge.
People can use archive.org if they want a "lesion" for anyone considering
similar actions as the old SourceForge.

~~~
MaikuMori
I wanted to write it before, but skipped. 35 million page views is not usage.
My guess is that you have considerably less sessions with more than 1 page
view. I doubt there are more than 5k active projects (again, not the ones used
by 1 person).

There are a lot of links to SourceForge on the web. As someone in the thread
pointed out there are even spammers abusing it. People clicking on the links
and making "sessions" doesn't constitute actual usage.

I doubt anyone in this thread uses SourceForge for hosting. I am not. And I
wouldn't recommend it. If I asked my peers if they use it I'm certain that not
a single person would say "Yes".

So yes, in my eyes it's dead.

\----

Oh I just opened the site and there are statistics on main page. 600 bug
reports and 12k commits per week across all of the hosted projects is not
really a big number. 10th most recently updated project was updated 1 month
ago. Yes there are still some fairly large projects hosted (probably only for
distribution) on SF and they receive considerable amount of downloads, but
they're only there because they have been on SF for ages.

Without fresh blood, those projects are just the last breath of SourceForge.

Sincerely good luck. My point was that not only you have to fix the past, but
also deliver better product. The market is quite saturated, people have
choices, the end users are more tech savvy with higher standards, developers
expect much more as well.

------
sidcool
Trust lost is difficult to be gained back. But I will give them a benefit of
doubt and watch.

~~~
loganabbott
Thank you

------
SeanDav
This seems like an excellent opportunity for SourceForge to become a better
GitHub. GitHub, as good as it is, has quite a few weaknesses which they are in
no hurry to address. SourceForge could change all that by going after GitHub's
corporate business in order to monetize their business and improving every
aspect of the free side of the business to match or exceed GitHub feature for
feature.

SourceForge have stumbled, badly, but if they play their cards right, this
could become a very exciting time for open source.

------
gethoht
Sourceforge used to be a reputable source for software, mainly open source. I
hope they actually do try to regain the community's trust by getting rid of
the crap they were bundling.

~~~
loganabbott
The crap is gone forever.

~~~
astrodust
Like the Flint Michigan fiasco with lead in the water, this is going to hang
over SourceForge _forever_.

You poisoned the well. On purpose. You'll never shake that.

~~~
loganabbott
We didn't poison the well. We purchased the well from the people who poisoned
it and immediately detoxified it.

~~~
astrodust
It's more like you guys bought property that's an EPA Superfund site.

------
bsharitt
While it's probably too little too late, it'd be near from a nostalgia
perspective to have Sourceforge relevant again. Created in June 2001, my sf
account is my oldest internet account I still have access too. They might have
an opening against GitHub if the move fast and correctly.

~~~
inopinatus
There is an opening, but the window will close fast and multiple competitors
will try to fit through it at once.

Their brand recognition is still high. That's about all they've got going.
Something spectacular is required to shock this particular dead horse back
into life. But I don't give much for their chances. That brand recognition is
high for all the wrong reasons. The new president claims a background in
digital marketing and content aggregation, not development or developer
engagement.

~~~
cpeterso
Does Sourceforge bring any unique assets besides its name, which is arguably a
negative? There does seem to be a current in the air of anti-GitHub or post-
GitHub discussions, but GitLab or Bitbucket seem better positioned than
Sourceforge to grab that opportunity.

~~~
ufmace
Their best asset is probably the pile of useful project still hosted there,
even if many are more like legacy projects that haven't had any activity in
years.

The name is probably neutral at best. It has a lot of good memories from older
open-source types who remember them putting up something that worked in the
early days. But there's also a lot of bad memories from people who remember
them mostly for serving malware and deceptive advertising.

------
rblatz
Well, they seem like they get their target audience more than Dice did. If I
were them I'd start trying to emulate and improve upon github. Seems like
right now would be the time to strike.

~~~
justinclift
Yeah. If they get involved with (say) the GitLab ecosystem, that could both
reduce GitHub growth + attract more talent/projects to SourceForge. Both of
which they'd be wanting to do.

~~~
sytse
Anyone is welcome to use GitLab, it would be awesome to see SourceForge switch
to it.

------
gardano
My morning routine back in the days where the classic asp/.NET v1 transition
was happening:

• Read a bunch of RSS feeds in NetNewsWire.

• Catch up on recent activity at FreshMeat, and learn to understand the code.

• Catch up on recent activity at SourceForge, and learn to understand the code
(often by simply retyping it into Visual Studio by hand, partly for muscle-
memory, partly as a way to think through the problem).

• Maybe read more articles on how to use SVN.

I learned a lot about how to code just with this routine. It would be great to
know that aspiring coders would be able to do the same in this day and age.

I wish you well, and hope that you become relevant again. SourceForge was a
huge part of my learning experience as a budding developer.

~~~
loganabbott
Thank you. We hope to become relevant in the minds of developers like you
soon.

------
emmelaich
I guess Google's blocking of sites that had deceptive download images may have
been one of the catalysts for this.

~~~
loganabbott
They did not block us, but all deceptive download buttons are coming off of
SourceForge. Many of those "deceptive" download ads are actually served from
Google AdX, but we are going to make it easy to report them when they arise so
we can take quick action.

~~~
micro-ram
Just as a test I decided today (Feb 13, 2016) to download WinSCP. Fully
surrounding the actual download link[1] are no less than 3 ads with the word
"Download" prominently displayed. The project page[2] was even worse with 4
"Download" ads. This is still unacceptable.

[1] [http://imgur.com/XGkkPag](http://imgur.com/XGkkPag)

[2] [http://imgur.com/822v7CN](http://imgur.com/822v7CN)

------
smegel
Maybe they can implement a rocking issue tracker and steal some users back
from Github

~~~
loganabbott
Good idea

------
jeremy_wiebe
What exactly was the reason for acquiring SourceForge? Was it that it came
along with Slashdot?

I don't have much interest in what happens to it, but there might be space for
a well-run, well-designed source control/issue service.

One thing that SF has is also email lists, doesn't it? Does Github have
anything comparable? Or are lists even necessary anymore if you have a quality
issue fracker?

~~~
loganabbott
We saw a great opportunity in SourceForge: tens of thousands of projects and
developers, and a very sizable user base. The problem was that they were being
largely ignored by the previous owners. Done right, I think SourceForge can
become extremely successful again. Same goes for Slashdot.

------
mrmondo
Interestingly - I was going to read it, but the site is blocked for known
malware lol

~~~
loganabbott
All the bundled installers are gone. Next order of business is to rid the site
of all deceptive advertising. The old owners began it, but it was not
transparent or easy for someone to report a deceptive ad. We will make sure
soon that it is so we can begin removing all deceptive ads placed on
SourceForge by advertisers buying traffic programatically.

~~~
mrmondo
I'll still never trust them, ever again. On top of the lack of trust - the
site has been so poorly designed for so long now which is completely
unacceptable for a site that makes a profit.

Why would you use sourceforge over say something like Gitlab?

~~~
loganabbott
We're going to improve the design as well. It's only been 2 weeks since we
acquired the site. Hope we'll earn your trust back in time.

~~~
mrmondo
Too little, too late I'm sorry. If you want to do something good why not start
something good and then talk about how you wanted to create something modern,
safe and based off the what you know when wrong with SF?

~~~
chris_wot
You've said this ad nauseum. We get it! Let the guy try to sort it out. He has
a mammoth task ahead of him and I don't envy the work he's got to do to sort
this out, but at least he's making an attempt. He's already made the right
first moves.

I'll be watching with interest. Either this won't work, or it will work really
well! I can't see any middle ground. I hope for Logan's sake that he's a
spectacular success and he makes a lot of money in an ethical way :-)

~~~
loganabbott
Thanks!

------
Caid11
I'm looking forward to seeing how they plan to improve the site, especially
now that they've committed to a concerted effort to clean up their ads and
their practices.

~~~
loganabbott
Glad to hear it. Stay tuned and you'll hopefully see some great stuff come to
fruition

------
tyingq
Aside from the malware, SourceForge was also pretty heavily overrun by
spammers. Might want to have a look at that.

For example:
[https://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Asourceforge.net%20pa...](https://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Asourceforge.net%20payday%20loans)

~~~
loganabbott
You're right. If you click on some of those you'll see they are now 404'd.
Google just has to de-index them. We've been removing tens of thousands of
spam pages like this per day. Should have it all cleaned up in the next week
or so.

------
meddlepal
Whooo boy. Good luck. Fixing up SF into something meaningful is going to be
like taking over a dilapidated skyscraper and trying to turn it into luxury
condo's.

Actually sounds kinda fun.

~~~
loganabbott
It's been.... interesting.. thus far. But definitely fun.

~~~
meddlepal
I'd be curious what kind of tech problems you need to solve. Shoot me an
email: meddlepal@gmail.com .

------
lukego
SourceForge nearly killed SLIME in the early days when they accidentally
deleted our entire repository and didn't restore it. Fun times.

------
ed_blackburn
If I were SF I'd hire some decent C devs and boss libgit2 so they can drop in
their own backend that'll work with a decent UX experience. They'll need SVN
too but surely that'd be more for in-situ repos. Integrate a decent CI/CD
product with binaries and they've got somewhere to start...

------
StephenAshmore
An open-source machine learning toolkit(waffles) I regularly use in research
was hosted on sourceforge for its entire lifespan, and was recently moved over
to GitHub. The change in exposure for that toolkit has been extreme. I don't
know how many people will be willing to switch back to sourceforge.

------
tlrobinson
SourceForge has been effectively strip mined. I'm curious to see if anything
interesting comes of this.

~~~
loganabbott
We hope so. Got a lot of good things planned

------
jcoffland
@loganabbott, How will you manage SF? It seems like a big job and if you
already own hundreds of websites doesn't this spread you pretty thin? How much
are you willing to spend on improving SF? Are you ultimately after ad revenue?

~~~
loganabbott
I don't sleep. Willing to spend whatever we need to.

~~~
jcoffland
Do you literally not sleep at all, very little or are you just being
facetious. I'm curious because I go through regular periods where I skip
sleeping for a day or two.

------
Zelphyr
As an early developer of SourceForge I'm glad to see these changes. GitHub is
great, but it needs a real competitor and I've always felt SF could be that if
done right.

~~~
kbutler
Gitlab is that competitor - great free community edition, great feature set,
great free offering.

Sourceforge had a great legacy as the pioneer providing open source hosting,
but has a badly tarnished legacy. It may or may not be able to rebuild that.

------
Tideflat
Woot! I can stop feeling guilty about hosting my hobbist code on sourceforge
out of laziness and not understanding git.

------
kmfrk
uBlock won't even allow me to visit that blog post, hard to see any future for
SourceForge.

------
Theodores
The MySpace of open source software. Maybe they need Justin Timberlake on
board.

~~~
DonHopkins
Just don't sell out to Rupert Murdoch, try to have an affair with his wife, or
throw a pie in his face. She'll smack you! [1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLVBUotX3MU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLVBUotX3MU)

------
unimpressive
You don't need to reply to every comment though, it does come off as a bit
desperate. :P

~~~
loganabbott
Not replying to _every_ comment. Just most of them. It's been a long week, but
I like hearing feedback.

~~~
unimpressive
Your account seems newish, so I'm not sure how familiar you are with HN as a
community. But we generally value signal to noise ratio pretty highly here,
it's semi-bad form to repeat yourself in multiple comments, and it's very bad
form to say things like 'thanks for your support'. That's more for reddit than
it is HN.

~~~
dang
> _it 's very bad form to say things like 'thanks for your support'_

No, that's not correct.

 _Empty comments can be ok if they 're positive. There's nothing wrong with
submitting a comment saying just "Thanks." What we especially discourage are
comments that are empty and negative—comments that are mere name-calling._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

~~~
unimpressive
Huh. I remembered incorrectly then. My apologies.

------
jvoorhis
That they call SourceForge "the site" says something. It was once a reputable,
unique and really useful business, the only one of its kind doing pioneering
work.

Imagine Sergey Brin having lunch with an elder relative who asks, "How's the
web site?"

SF never came within an order of magnitude of Google's success obviously, but
the language still betrays the attitude here.

~~~
rosser
I don't get this criticism. In pretty much every web-based shop I've ever
worked, "the site" is unambiguously " _our_ site", for the local value of
"our". And on every website I can remember ever having seen that language, it
was referring to the very site I was at that moment browsing.

That's not attitude, it's linguistic convention.

------
prdonahue
Wait, people still use SourceForge?

~~~
loganabbott
About 35 million per month currently

