Popular Software projects leave Sourceforge
The software project hosting website Sourceforge started to offer a new monetization option to projects hosted on the site in mid-2013 when it introduced install-wrappers which enabled projects to add third-party offers to installers on Windows to earn revenue from software installations.
The move back then was controversial but opt-in which meant that only select downloads on the site were wrapped in the installer.
The new monetization option along with advertisement on the site that was sometimes deceptive in nature as it features download links and buttons prominently, turned several projects away from Sourceforge back then.
This changed recently -- briefly -- when Sourceforge started to take over abandoned projects on the site to add download wrappers to project downloads.
Projects that have been abandoned on Sourceforge are not necessarily abandoned completely. This is for instance the case for the popular image editor The Gimp which was simply moved to a host of its own from where files are now served to users.
Mirrors of popular projects that moved away from Sourceforge are kept on the site however and those were then taken over by the company running the site.
Sourceforge quickly stopped the practice after reports emerged on various sites on the Internet about the company's business practice. While Sourceforge reacted quickly, it was clear almost immediately that damage was done not only to the public image of Sourceforge but also in regards to developer relations.
The admin of the popular NotePad++ text editor announced today that the project would leave SourceForge as a response to what happened in past weeks.
Obviously, the paid component per installation system is one of their important income generating scams. I would be fine with that, if they were the actual owners of the legitimate software. The real problem is, they are polluting these open source software installations for the purpose of filling their pockets by this scam, and worst of all, without even notifying the authors/creators of this software, while the creators are struggling against such parasitic software in order to keep their installers cleaner and safer.
Such a shameless policy should be condemned, and the Notepad++ project will move entirely out of SourceForge.
The project will use Github as the development hub for Notepad++ exclusively.
Several other projects, tmux, nmap or VLC for instance try to get Sourceforge to remove projects from the site as well.
What may be even more troubling for Sourceforge is that uBlock -- and all of its spin-offs and forks -- is now blocking access to the site by default.
Users of said extensions may need to update third-party filters before the block becomes active in the browser. This is done on the dashboard under 3rd-party filters with a click on the update now button. The filter that contains the instruction to block SourceForge is uBlock filters.
Closing Words
The decision to take over projects and include download wrappers in downloads was without doubt a bad one. The decision hurt and will continue to hurt SourceForge especially since plenty of project hosting services are available on today's Internet that developers and companies can move to.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.