SourceForge

Concept

SourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for free 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 providing revision control systems such as CVS, SVN, Bazaar, Git and Mercurial. Major features (amongst others) include project wikis, metrics and analysis, access to a MySQL database, and unique sub-domain URLs (in the form http://project-name.sourceforge.net).

The vast number of users at SourceForge.net (over 3 million as of 2013) exposes prominent projects to a variety of developers and can create a positive feedback loop. As a project's activity rises, SourceForge.net's internal ranking system makes it more visible to other developers through SourceForge directory and Enterprise Directory. Given that many open-source projects fail due to lack of developer support, exposure to such a large community of developers can continually breathe new life into a project.

Revenue model

SourceForge's traditional revenue model is through advertising banner sales on their site. In 2006 SourceForge Inc. reported quarterly takings of US$6.5 million. In 2009 SourceForge reported a gross quarterly income of US$23 million through media and e-commerce streams. In 2011 a revenue of 20 million USD was reported for the combined value of the SourceForge, slashdot and freecode holdings, prior to SourceForge's acquisition.

Since 2013 additional revenue generation schemes, such as bundleware models, were trialled, with the goal of increasing SourceForge's revenue. The result has in some cases been the appearance of malware bundled with SourceForge downloads. On February 9, 2016, SourceForge announced they had eliminated their DevShare program practice of bundling installers with project downloads.

History

SourceForge, founded in 1999 by VA 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 without charge. The software running the SourceForge site was released as free software in January 2000 and was later named SourceForge Alexandria. The last release under a free license was made in November 2001; after the dot-com bubble, SourceForge was later powered by the proprietary SourceForge Enterprise Edition, a separate product re-written in Java which was marketed for offshore outsourcing.

In September 2002 SourceForge was temporarily banned in China. The site was banned again in China, for about a month, in July 2008. On August 6, 2012, sourceforge.net was banned again. Several days later the ban was lifted.

In November 2008 SourceForge was sued by the French collection society Société civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF) for hosting downloads of the file sharing application Shareaza.

In 2009 SourceForge announced a new site platform known as Allura, which would be an extensible, open source platform licensed under the Apache License, utilizing components such as Python and MongoDB, and offering REST APIs. In June 2012 the Allura project was donated to the Apache Software Foundation as Apache Allura

In September 2012 SourceForge, Slashdot, and Freecode were acquired from Geeknet by the online job site Dice.com for $20 million, and incorporated into a subsidiary known as Slashdot Media. On September 26, 2012, it was reported that attackers had compromised a SourceForge mirror, and modified a download of phpMyAdmin to add security exploits.

In July 2015 Dice announced that it planned to sell SourceForge and Slashdot; on January 27, 2016, the two sites were sold to the San Diego-based BizX, LLC for an undisclosed amount.

Controversies

Some of SourceForge's monetization practices have been met with criticism by developers and end users.

DevShare adware

In July 2013 SourceForge announced that it would provide project owners with an optional feature called DevShare, which places closed-source ad-supported content into the binary installers and gives the project part of the ad revenue. Opinions of this new feature vary, with some complaining about users not being as aware of what they are getting or being able to trust the downloaded content, whereas others see it as a reasonably harmless option that keeps individual projects and users in control.

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 bundles potentially unwanted programs. 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 ..."

In response to the DevShare adware many users and projects migrated to GitHub, other software hosting facilities, or self-host their software. In May 2015 SourceForge took control of pages for five projects that had migrated to other hosting sites and replaced the project downloads with adware-laden downloads. Community concerns triggered a prompt review of SourceForge mirroring program, and third-party bundling of mirrored content was discontinued on May 27, 2015.

After SourceForge was sold to BizX in 2016, DevShare was discontinued. On May 17, 2016, SourceForge announced that they were now scanning all projects for malware, and displaying warnings on projects detected to have malware.

Project hijackings and bundled malware

GIMP, who discontinued their use of SourceForge as a download mirror in November 2013, reported in May 2015 that SourceForge was hosting versions of their Windows binaries that "put other software apart from GIMP on our users' systems" on their Open Source Mirror directory, which SourceForge claims is a collection of abandoned projects. This came despite SourceForge's commitment in November 2013 to never bundle adware with project downloads without developers' consent. GIMP said "To us, this firmly places SourceForge among the dodgy crowd of download sites."

On June 1, 2015, SourceForge claimed that they stopped coupling "third party offers" with unmaintained SourceForge projects. Since this announcement was made, a number of other developers reported that their SourceForge projects had been taken over by SourceForge staff accounts (but have not had binaries edited), including nmap, and VLC media player. 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.

Project of the Month

Since 2002 SourceForge features a Project of the Month.

Usage

As of May 2013, the SourceForge repository hosted more than 300,000 projects and had more than 3 million registered users, although not all were active. The domain sourceforge.net attracted at least 33 million visitors by August 2009 according to a Compete.com survey.

Country restrictions

In its terms of use, 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. As of 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. A month later SourceForge relaxed the restrictions so that individual projects could indicate whether or not SourceForge should block their software from download to those countries.

Crimea has been blocked since 1 February 2015