Does SourceForge Have A Future?

Written by Ian Elliot

Thursday, 11 February 2016

The new owners of SourceForge are hoping to halt the decline of the once popular source code repository and persuade open source projects to use it once more. The first move is to terminate the practice of bundling adware with software installations

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SourceForge, and its stablemate Slashdot, were acquired at the end of January by web publisher BIZX, LLC from DHI, formerly Dice Holdings. which had owned it since 2012. SourceForge was originally launched in 1999 by VA Software cofounded by Larry Augustin and James Vera. This company later became Geeknet and acquired Slashdot as part of Andover.net in 2000.

SourceForge was already well established by the time GitHub, its main competitor, came on the scene in 2008.

Quite when SourceForge began its decline is hard to pinpoint, but last June we reported Projects Abandon SourceForge when the exodus was very obvious.

The question now is whether SourceForge can recover from the damage inflicted on it during the DHI era.

In a blog post that also asks for feedback to help shape the future direction for the site announced, Logan Abbott, one of the owners of BIZX and president of its SourceForge Media subsidiary explained his intention to restore SourceForge's reputation as a trusted home for open source software. He states:

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’re more interested in doing the right thing than making extra short-term profit.

He also indicates that the community can expect more developments intended to encourage them to return to SourceForge:

Plans for the near future include full https support for both SourceForge and Slashdot, and a lot more changes we think developers and end-users will embrace.

Whether this will be enough, remains to be seen. However, as GitHub is also facing managerial issues, this is a good time for the new SourceForge Media to be proactive.