Did Sourceforge slowly dies? Many projects start moving from there.

I noticed many projects these days moved from Sourceforge and latest commits are just links to Github. What is happening?

Sourceforge was designed back when CVS was THE versioning system. They adapted well to SVN because it was basically CVS but better. They didn't adapt well to the decentralized versioning systems such as Mercurial and Git.

Lots of people are moving to GitHub because it's all around a lot more convenient. The ease with which you can fork a repository and make pull requests (heck for very minor changes, such as fixing a typo, you can do that entirely from the web interface, you don't even need to fork beforehand) and the way you can easily leave comments and annotate proposed code changes, it's just a lot better than what Sourceforge offers.

Also, this doesn't help.

Yeah I remember there was some buyout and the new owners were putting spyware/adware in abandoned software - something like that. I thought I read that there were efforts to reverse this but I didn't follow.

On the surface with Googling I found a few people accusing them of spyware since 2013. This looks like the smoking gun: http://blog.gluster.org/2013/08/how-far-the-once-mighty-sourceforge-has-fallen/

I am unfamiliar with Gluster and any weight or credibility that they have.

On the Linux side I'd say Source forge died a while ago, a lot of the stuff used tends to be github. Hell a server company I did work for had some involvement with them, hell I think the last time I used sourcefoge was when I was reinstalling manjaro? And even then that was just to download a torrent file.

I used to use Sourceforge for all my projects. I remember Sourceforge back when it first launched around 1999-2000, and at the time it was a really great resource. It was kind of incredible to have a free site where you could get a website, CVS repository, bug tracking, mailing lists, and other stuff like access to build farms for testing your code on different systems. It was at the height of a period of mania over open source, and the site gave you everything you needed to run an open source project. At the time it was a really cool resource.

Here's the thing though: Sourceforge hasn't drastically changed since 1999. Version control technology has advanced a lot in the years since it launched - first with Subversion, then with Git and other version control systems. Other sites (Github particularly) have shown how it's possible to do what Sourceforge does, much better. If you're curious I could probably write a whole article about how Github's interface is superior, but suffice it to say that it's better in every way. It's a difference that really helps to drive collaboration and discussion around the project in a way that Sourceforge never did. It's a cliche thing to say, but Sourceforge is very much stuck in the "Web 1.0" era.

I moved Chocolate Doom from Sourceforge to Github several years ago. There were several reasons for doing so: 1) I wanted to move from Subversion to Git anyway, so there was no reason not to; 2) I'd seen how Freedoom's move to Git and Github had helped to drive collaboration; 3) I was already starting to hear stories about Sourceforge doing shady stuff with bundling malware in downloads; 4) uncertainty about the future of the site - changes in ownership and business practices (see 3) that potentially hint at a failing company that might not be around much longer.

Sourceforge has always been owned by a parent company and has never seemed to have "self determination" if that makes sense. It seems like a product in maintenance mode that isn't being worked on any more, and it's been that way for years. New features only seem to appear (like Git support) when it needs to "catch up" with competitors. Github makes for a stark comparison where we see active development and improvement, and more importantly, growth. It's where everything seems to be happening nowadays.

fraggle said:

I used to use Sourceforge for all my projects. I remember Sourceforge back when it first launched around 1999-2000, and at the time it was a really great resource. It was kind of incredible to have a free site where you could get a website, CVS repository, bug tracking, mailing lists, and other stuff like access to build farms for testing your code on different systems. It was at the height of a period of mania over open source, and the site gave you everything you needed to run an open source project. At the time it was a really cool resource.

Here's the thing though: Sourceforge hasn't drastically changed since 1999. Version control technology has advanced a lot in the years since it launched - first with Subversion, then with Git and other version control systems. Other sites (Github particularly) have shown how it's possible to do what Sourceforge does, much better. If you're curious I could probably write a whole article about how Github's interface is superior, but suffice it to say that it's better in every way. It's a difference that really helps to drive collaboration and discussion around the project in a way that Sourceforge never did. It's a cliche thing to say, but Sourceforge is very much stuck in the "Web 1.0" era.

I moved Chocolate Doom from Sourceforge to Github several years ago. There were several reasons for doing so: 1) I wanted to move from Subversion to Git anyway, so there was no reason not to; 2) I'd seen how Freedoom's move to Git and Github had helped to drive collaboration; 3) I was already starting to hear stories about Sourceforge doing shady stuff with bundling malware in downloads; 4) uncertainty about the future of the site - changes in ownership and business practices (see 3) that potentially hint at a failing company that might not be around much longer.

Sourceforge has always been owned by a parent company and has never seemed to have "self determination" if that makes sense. It seems like a product in maintenance mode that isn't being worked on any more, and it's been that way for years. New features only seem to appear (like Git support) when it needs to "catch up" with competitors. Github makes for a stark comparison where we see active development and improvement, and more importantly, growth. It's where everything seems to be happening nowadays.

Interesting read on the history of revision control development hubs. Funny to see the rise and fall of these sorts of things simply because of their failure to innovate. Thanks for sharing, fraggle!

GitHub itself has been in danger of going down the same path. The software and site were stagnant for a long time until GitLab started showing them up.

chungy said:

GitHub itself has been in danger of going down the same path. The software and site were stagnant for a long time until GitLab started showing them up.

On the other hand, by remaining successful and active, they increasingly risk getting bought out by some Internet giant that doesn't have any interest in maintaining it as it is and will gradually ruin everything good about it. Then we'll have to repeat the whole cycle again with something else. I'd be very surprised if they make it much longer without selling out to Google, Microsoft, or Amazon.

Or they become a giant themselves. In any case, if Github goes the way of the asshole, the backlash will probably be large enough to remove them from the playing field quicker than anyone can look.

Git makes it easy to back up your bags and move, too. It was significantly harder to move a CVS or Subversion server to another host. But with Git, you just... change your remotes, push, life is happy.

GitHub is under the constant pressure of competition and this is good.