Type of site Software Owner BIZX, LLC Website freecode.com | Created by Patrick Lenz (scoop) Commercial Yes | |
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Freecode, formerly Freshmeat, is a website owned by BIZX, Inc. It helped people find software and keep track of the latest releases and updates. Among other things, the site also hosted user reviews and discussions. A majority of the software covered is open source for Unix-like systems, although Freecode also covered releases of closed-source, commercial and cross-platform software on Mac OS X and handhelds. Freecode was notable for its age, having started in 1997 as the first web-based aggregator of software releases.
The site was renamed from "Freshmeat" to "Freecode" on October 29, 2011, and in September 2012, Dice Holdings acquired the website from Geeknet.
Purportedly as a result of low traffic levels, the site is no longer being updated as of June 18, 2014. Because many of the linked software projects are otherwise difficult to find, the site contents have been kept online. After Open Source Initiative co-founder Eric S. Raymond called for a replacement, freshcode.club was created and is accepting submissions. However, Open Hub also lists open source projects and already offers more information on projects than Freecode.
On January 27, 2016, Freecode was sold, along with SourceForge and Slashdot, to current owners BIZX, Inc. The site remains in its archived state, but some discussion is on going to restore it.
Prior to Freecode's archival, programmers registered their projects with the site, and submitted information about updates. Software was categorized by field of application, license, development status, environment, intended audience, type of use, supported operating systems, programming languages used, and available natural languages.
Users could browse for software and downloads, and were able to rate or comment on the software. An NNTP server allowed Usenet-like access; complex search queries could be saved, with new or updated entries matching the query sent as daily e-mail notifications. Freecode also offered a news ticker stream, a daily newsletter, articles on Unix software-related topics and an IRC channel.
The entire database of software releases was freely available as a download.