It makes me sad to see a respectable piece of open source software hosted on this site with its intrusive advertising practices such as ads with fake "install" buttons on the download page.
What is the advantage of using Sourceforge these days when github and bitbucket are free for open source?
Even before github was around, sourceforge was a PITA. I remember clicking through the web UI for more than half an hour before finding the place where you could configure the project website/homepage.
Also, trying to delete an abandoned project, which had a mailing list, but it wouldn't let me delete the mailing list, because there was still an admin in there (me!), and I couldn't leave the mailing list, because then it would have been without admin. D'uh. And you couldn't delete a project with an active mailing list...
Then a few years later, after I didn't use SF much anymore, I tried to comment on the bug in the bug tracker, and didn't find any option to do that, even as a logged-in user.
I used google code as soon as it became available, because it worked, and had a much cleaner admin interface. Not to mention user interface.
> What is the advantage of using Sourceforge these days when github and bitbucket are free for open source?
I imagine the author figures that moving is a pain.
Don't forget, Sourceforge was the Github of yesteryear. I imagine in 10 years we may very well be asking the same of some old project hosted on Github.
Sourceforge's downfall was not finding a better business model than advertising – which has devolved into the worst kind of spammy ads. GitHub, on the other hand, has a solid business model that doesn't involve advertising. In fact, putting ads on the site would be suicide.
Sourceforge tried to find a better business model -- sourceforge enterprise edition -- but then spun it off and then sold it to a different company (CollabNet) in 2007...then over the next 3-5 years, laid off almost everyone behind sourceforge.net/OSDN. The only thing left of the company now is thinkgeek.
> Don't forget, Sourceforge was the Github of yesteryear.
Not really.
At that time, there were almost no alternatives. Sourceforge was slow and bloated, even without ads. Nobody wanted to use it, but at least it was free (in the sense of free beer).
And it took them ages to support SVN in addition to CVS. When they finally supported it, many project were already thinking about switching from SVN to a distributed VCS.
> It was "the way" to share your OSS project in its time
Nobody questions that.
But that doesn't quality for "the GitHub of that time", because most people like to use GitHub, so the analogy is incomplete in some essential aspects.
Eh, that's pretty nebulous. There's a whole lot not to like about GitHub, too. Vaguely hand wavy "oh that doesn't count cuz most people like GitHub" isn't really much proof of anything.
If you had the resources to host your own tracker/repository/wiki/mailinglist instead of using Sourceforge you did that. Github is so good it's actually hard to convince people it would be a good idea to have server for those things, even if money and time isn't the issue.
Not sure what you mean by "proof". Just take it as an anecdote of a contemporary witness. From your previous comments it seems that you didn't have to suffer through that time. Lucky you!
Hah, not quite. I've been in IT since 1995, suffered a layoff in the first dotcom crash. Don't get me wrong, Sourceforge has never been something I liked, but that didn't mean I agreed with the premise.
I'm also struggling to see any advantages to still using Sourceforge in 2015.
Firstly, they're well-known by now to be complicit in sponsored 'wrapper' installers bundling some pretty awful stuff - check out what they did with FileZilla - which is an even more intrusive advertising practice than that.
Secondly, they host a lot of executable code (and don't forget build scripts in source code, unless you check your Makefiles!), but they still don't use TLS, and don't even seem to have any plans to - which is by now negligent practice, I think, considering the widespread public knowledge of Hacking Team's (and GCHQ's) at-scale deployments of network-level file infectors.
SourceForge itself is free software. I think that's one possible reason to use it rather than GitHub or else.
The other possible is that SourceForge provide mailing list server and other service for projects. Anyway, you won't move a project around unless you have some strong motivations.
Is SourceForge really open source? Guess I must have missed that news. Regardless, Gitlab would still be a better choice in terms of UX and is also open source.
I agree that sourceforge.net as a service might not be my favourite, but Allura the forge-software seems pretty good. I think the only thing that comes close is the stack from Canonical -- but Allura seems more viable to self-host (and scale up when needed -- rather than "only a vm" or "full cluster"). It also seems less "overly opinionated", and still includes sensible defaults (contrast with getting up and running with Trac).
YMMV, but it doesn't look half-bad. Right now I don't need anything more than what you can easily get with either a separate wiki+mercurial+mailing-list, "just" trac or fossil -- but for something in-between "too big to host internally" and "too complex for Trac to be easy" -- it looks rather interesting. I'd love to hear any war stories.
GitLab developer here; it does! Where GitHub only allows images to be dragged into issue and comment description fields, GitLab allows this for any type of file.
Or, they could go one step further and do it like WinSCP.
That is, WinSCP has an own website that contains ads with fake download buttons. It's really nasty, but at least the advertisement payments go directly to the project, rather than just to the hosting service.
Searching the tmux mailing list [0], it looks like there were some recent discussions about migrating to GitHub.
Basically, it looks like the developers don't see any benefit to migrating that outweighs the cost of a migration. [1]
There is a GitHub mirror [2] maintained by, I think, one of the developers, but they don't accept pull requests.
It's interesting to note that, for such a popular project like tmux, there are so few contributors. [3] Five, to be exact.
Maybe that's an artifact of how the mirroring to GitHub works (perhaps the commit authors aren't translated correctly?), but I suspect it's more an artifact of an outdated contribution process and tooling.
lots of people have contributed to tmux (on a quick grep through the logs, probably ~25 have made significant or multiple contributions, ~170 have made small contributions)
Because it's how 99% of websites get their funding, allowing them to survive. Why have an adblocker installed when you can avoid the sites with obnoxious adverts?
Sometimes I have to get useful tools from them....like tmux.
As to why I use Adblock, I've never. Not once. Ever. Bought anything from an ad on a website. I _have_ bought books and such from the referral links on blogs (which adblock doesn't block).
The reason I use adblock is because I'm not the demographic ads on websites are targeting. So websites aren't losing any revenue by me not seeing their ads.
Of course they lose revenue. your view is like any other.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_impression)
you won't be taking money from the company, which started the ad campaign.
also: don't underestimate the effects on brand value, which will come subconsciously, if you look at ads.
You will know certain companies are still active etc. This is why you don't necessarily need to be targeted. simply informed.
The "sometimes" you talk about should just be with ads on. it won't hurt much, because it's just sometimes.
Only if you view CPI in isolation as money from the sky.
Marketers estimate the CPI they're willing to pay based on estimated conversions per impression. Ultimately, the money comes from sales. It always comes from sales.
If I don't ever purchase anything from a website ad, my impressions are worth zero. My impressions, and impressions by those like me, will drive down the price a company is willing to pay per impression since the conversion ratio also goes down. In fact, my impressions incur a negative effect since it still incurs a cost to the advertiser.
In the best of all possible worlds, only those who will ultimately buy a product are displayed the ad. Resulting in a 100% conversion ratio. Each impression would be maximally valuable and the price paid for that impression would rise to reflect that.
Those of us who use adblock have removed ourself from the market and from the conversion ratio calculations and cost per impression to the advertiser.
They might lose revenue at first, but in a way that is entirely healthy for a larger system of advertisers and clients, in that both advertiser and client reassess the effectiveness of an instrument (an ad network or product), and thus reassess the correctness of a price for an advertising opportunity.
Maybe I'm apathetic to these arguments because I'm quite comfortable paying for content and services, and I'm comfortable with a version of the web where a paying class gets to have paying-class products. If the public feels there should be a free thing, then let it be funded by taxes.
What do you gain by blocking adverts? An extra 150K from your data plan?
Quicker page loads, avoiding seizure inducing ads that are designed to attract your attention in an overly aggressive way, better visibility of text because it's not surrounded by flashy pictures, animations and videos. Plus avoiding Flash/Java/JS ads poisoned with malicious content.
And, oh yeah, and ~150K that won't hit my data plan.
For the record, I don't block all ads. I have sites that I allow them on because I am a frequent user and their ads are not too obnoxious to deal with. If my page views (never clicks though) help them then great! But I surf with the blocker on by default for the reasons laid out above.
Consuming content or a product whilst deliberately evading the means put in place to compensate a creator for the work done is akin to piracy. I don't see how there's any question that that isn't at least a morally grey area
"Your contract with the network is, you're going to watch the spots. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming."
At least with lynx/links, you don't get any javascript functionality and the experience as a whole is diminished.
With an ad blocker, you selectively block the javascript you don't like but that the operators rely on to bring in revenue, while still getting the otherwise 'full' experience.
If sourceforge went under, do you think I'd be unable to get the source to tmux?
Since obviously I'd still be able to get tmux, what value is sourceforge actually providing me? They might be providing tmux developers some value, but they aren't providing any value to me.
I value what these sites are giving me, but not enough to put up with ads. If adblock didn't exist I'd probably visit places like sf or youtube a lot less.
If you're developing anything for the web that might involve advertising, and even certain things that don't, it makes it hard to test, especially if you continually forget to disable your ad blocker. (I'm only being marginally facetious; I worked with a developer who refused to accept that his ad blocker prevented him from seeing issues with Omniture - now Site Catalyst - eating mouse clicks.)
A ponzu scheme is a fraudulent investment operation where the operator pays returns to its investors from citrus-flavoured soy sauce sent to the operators by new investors.
Perhaps no advantage, but it's a good thing. As in the CPU market, there are Intel, AMD, even another architecture alternatives, eg. ARM. It's just an analogy. :-)
Does anyone who would be downloading tmux not use an ad blocker? Because if so, consider me shocked. I mean, not that the ads aren't still a moral concern, but from a practical standpoint it doesn't seem like a big deal. I didn't even realize Sourceforge still had ads...
What is the advantage of using Sourceforge these days when github and bitbucket are free for open source?