 SourceForge logo since 2018 | |
Type of site | Software discovery platform for freehosting foropen-sourcesoftware project management and B2B software review & comparison directory |
|---|---|
| Owner | Slashdot Media (2019–present)[1] BIZX, LLC (2016–2019)[2] DHI Group, Inc. (2012–2016) Geeknet, Inc. (1999–2012) |
| Created by | VA Software |
| Key people | Logan Abbott (President)[2][3] |
| URL | sourceforge |
| IPv6 support | Yes |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Optional(required for creating and joining projects) |
| Launched | November 1999; 26 years ago (1999-11) |
| Current status | Online |
SourceForge is aweb service founded byTony Guntharp, Uriah Welcome, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hostingopen-source software projects, and a directory for comparing and reviewing B2B software that lists over 104,500 business software titles.[4][5] It providessource code repository hosting,bug tracking,mirroring of downloads forload balancing, awiki for documentation, developer and usermailing lists, user-supportforums, user-writtenreviews and ratings, anews bulletin,micro-blog for publishing project updates, and other features.
SourceForge was one of the first to offer this service free of charge to open-source projects.[6] Since 2012, the website has run onApache Allura software. SourceForge offers free hosting and free access to tools for developers offree andopen-source software.
As of September 2020[update], the SourceForge repository claimed to host more than 502,000 projects and had more than 3.7 million registered users.[4]
SourceForge is a web-basedsource code repository. It acts as a centralized location forfree and open-source software projects. It was the first to offer this service for free to open-source projects. Project developers have access to centralized storage and tools for managing projects, though it is best known for providingrevision control systems such asCVS,Subversion,Bazaar,Git andMercurial.[7] Major features (amongst others)[8] include projectwikis, metrics and analysis, access to aMySQLdatabase, and unique sub-domainURLs (in the formhttps://project-name.sourceforge.net).
SourceForge's traditional revenue model is through advertising banner sales on their site. Reported revenue increased from quarterly takings ofUS$1 million in 2005, to 6.5 million in 2006[9] to US$23 million a quarter in 2009[10] before dropping back to reported total annual revenue of US$20 million in 2011 across SourceForge, slashdot and freecode (prior to SourceForge's acquisition).[11]
Since 2013, additional revenue generation schemes, such asbundleware models, have been trialled, with the goal of increasing SourceForge's revenue. Negative community reactions to the partnership program led to a review of the program, which was nonetheless opened up to all SourceForge projects on February 7, 2014.[12][13]
On February 9, 2016, the new owners BIZX, LLC, announced they had eliminated the DevShare program.[14]
SourceForge, founded in 1999 byVA Software, was the first provider of a centralized location for free and open-source software developers to control and manage software development and offering this service free of charge.[6] The software running the SourceForge site was released as free software in January 2000[15][16] and was later named SourceForge Alexandria.[17] The last release under a free license was made in November 2001.[18] After thedot-com bubble, SourceForge was later powered by the proprietarySourceForge Enterprise Edition, a separate product re-written inJava[19][20] which was marketed for use inoffshore outsourcing.[21]
SourceForge has been temporarily banned inChina three times: in September 2002,[22] in July 2008 (for about a month)[23][24] and on August 6, 2012 (for several days).
In November 2008, SourceForge was sued by the Frenchcollection societySociété civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF) for hosting downloads of the file sharing applicationShareaza.[25]
In 2009, SourceForge announced a new site platform known as Allura, which would be an extensible, open source platform licensed under theApache License, utilizing components such asPython andMongoDB, and offeringRESTAPIs.[26] In June 2012, the Allura project was donated to theApache Software Foundation as Apache Allura.[27][28]
In September 2012, SourceForge,Slashdot, andFreecode were acquired fromGeeknet by the online job siteDice.com for $20 million, and incorporated into a subsidiary known as Slashdot Media.[29][30] In July 2015, Dice announced that it planned to sell SourceForge and Slashdot,[31] and, in January 2016, the two sites were sold to the San Diego–based BIZX, LLC for an undisclosed amount.[32] In December 2019,BIZX rebranded asSlashdot Media.[1]
On September 26, 2012, it was reported that attackers had compromised a SourceForge mirror, and modified a download ofphpMyAdmin to add security exploits.[33]
In July 2013, SourceForge announced that it would provide project owners with an optional feature calledDevShare, which places closed-source ad-supported content into the binary installers and gives the project part of the ad revenue.[34] Opinions of this new feature varied; some complained about users not being as aware of what they are getting or being able to trust the downloaded content, whereas others saw it as a reasonably harmless option that keeps individual projects and users in control.[35]
In November 2013,GIMP, a free image manipulation program, removed its download from SourceForge, citing misleading download buttons that potentially confuse customers as well as SourceForge's own Windows installer, which bundlespotentially unwanted programs with GIMP. In a statement, GIMP called SourceForge a "once useful and trustworthy place to develop and host FLOSS applications" that now faces "a problem with the ads they allow on their sites".[36][37][38] In some cases this program appeared to introducemalware bundled with SourceForge downloads.[39]
In May 2015, SourceForge took control of pages for five projects that had migrated to other hosting sites and replaced the project downloads withadware-laden downloads, including GIMP.[40] This came despite SourceForge's commitment in November 2013 to never bundle adware with project downloads without developers' consent.[41][42]
On June 1, 2015, SourceForge claimed that they had stopped coupling "third party offers" with unmaintained SourceForge projects.[43] After this announcement was made, more developers continued to report that their SourceForge projects had been taken over by SourceForge staff accounts (but have not had binaries edited), includingnmap[42][44] andVLC media player.[45]On June 18, 2015, SourceForge announced that SourceForge-maintained mirrored projects were removed and anticipated the formation of a Community Panel to review their mirroring practices.[46]
SourceForge discontinued DevShare and the bundling of installers after SourceForge was sold to BizX in early 2016.[47][3] On May 17, 2016, SourceForge announced that they were now scanning all projects for malware and displaying warnings on projects detected to have malware.[48]
As of May 2013[update], the SourceForge repository hosted more than 300,000 projects and had more than 3 million registered users,[49] although not all were active. The domainsourceforge.net attracted at least 33 million visitors by August 2009 according to aCompete.com survey.[50]
In its terms of use,[51] SourceForge states that its services are not available to users in countries on the sanction list of the U.S.Office of Foreign Assets Control (including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria). Since 2008 the secure server used for making contributions to the site has blocked access from those countries. In January 2010, the site had blocked all access from those countries, including downloads. Any IP address that appeared to belong to one of those countries could not use the site.[52] By the following month, SourceForge relaxed the restrictions so that individual projects could indicate whether or not SourceForge should block their software from download to those countries.[53] This, however, had been reversed by November 2020 for North Korea and other countries.[54]Crimea has been blocked since February 1, 2015.[55][56][57][better source needed]
Software Corp., late Thursday reported third-quarter net earnings of $6.49 million, or 9 cents a share, up from $997,000, or 2 cents a share, during the year-ago period.
It's finally here...The Code behind this site is being released under the terms of the GPL.
...around 2002, VA Software decided to junk the entire SourceForge codebase ... as the basis for its proprietary SourceForge Enterprise product, and recode the entire thing from scratch in Java...
SourceForge.net was built ... using popular web scripting languages including PHP, Perl and Python and many Open Source tools and components. ... By contrast, SourceForge Enterprise Edition was architected and built from the ground up ... [with a] Platform-independent J2EE architecture
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