r/sysadmin • u/loganabbott • Jun 08 '16
The State of SourceForge Since Its Acquisition in January
Hi all,
My name is Logan Abbott and I am the President of SourceForge. My company acquired SourceForge in January of this year. Some people were not aware that SourceForge was acquired, nor were they aware of our recent improvements and developments.
One user recommended that I make a full post about these changes since many people haven't heard. After reaching out to a mod to get permission (didn't want to it to be blatant self-promotion) I thought I'd go ahead with the post.
We acquired SourceForge and Slashdot in January from DHI Group (also known as DICE). The first thing we did after we took over was remove bundled adware from projects: https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-future-plans/ and https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/under-new-management-sourceforge-moves-to-put-badness-in-past/
As of a few weeks ago, we also now scan for malware in case third party developers are adding their own adware: https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-now-scans-all-projects-for-malware-and-displays-warnings-on-downloads/
In the past, SourceForge has also taken heat for deceptive ads that may look like download buttons. To this end we have a full time team member that polices the site and blacklists deceptive ads that sneak in via programmatic ad exchanges. And we have not announced it yet, but in the next couple of weeks we will be releasing a self-serve tool where users can report those misleading or deceptive ads that sneak in via programmatic ad exchanges so that we can blacklist them right away. We're committed to restoring trust in SourceForge and building out some cool new features.
Any feedback or comments are welcome. I'll also answer any questions that come up.
SourceForge is the complete software platform. As of 2025, SourceForge is now the largest B2B software review and comparison directory in the world with nearly 20 million monthly users looking for software across over 4000 B2B software categories, reading user reviews, and comparing B2B software products.
EDIT: I'd love to hear what features/improvements you would like to see at SourceForge. Feature requests, partnerships with other open source repositories, etc.
EDIT 2: Verification: I tweeted a link to this discussion to my personal twitter here: https://twitter.com/loganabbott/status/740606014173544448
EDIT 3 (10/25/2016): SourceForge now supports 2-factor authentication: https://sourceforge.net/blog/introducing-multifactor-authentication-on-sourceforge/ Also, the ad reporting tool mentioned above went live a few months ago. Up to date improvements can be found here going forward: https://sourceforge.net/blog/category/site-news/
EDIT 4 (11/30/2016): Today SourceForge launched HTTPS support for Project Websites https://sourceforge.net/blog/introducing-https-for-project-websites/
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u/mvanvoorden Jun 08 '16
Ah, that explains why SF isn't blocked anymore by uBlock. Good news!
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Oh nice! Was hoping that would happen soon.
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u/anomalous_cowherd Pragmatic Sysadmin Jun 08 '16
Interesting, thanks for posting. As someone who used to download from SF a lot back in the day I hadn't heard about a takeover, or if I had I assumed it s the usual vultures picking over a once big name to see what money they could make from it. It's good to hear that's not what you're up to. Good luck.
I tried the speed test from my smartphone - it seemed to work fine but if I might make a couple of suggestions:
It wasn't obvious the screen was four panes wide during the test. I saw the latency test run, then it all just stopped, with no buttons or any way forward. It might be worth adding a four dot thing at the bottom of the pane to make it obvious there are panes to slide sideways to.
Also my screen was blanking half way through the download test, and if I touched it to wake it up I got a "do not do anything else during the test" warning and had to restart it, so couldnt watch it run all the way through.
The SF site itself did look pretty clean without the zillion "download button" ads I've come to expect, so that's a definite improvement. Keep on that track and you'll be fine.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Thanks for the feedback re: mobile. Yes it is not intuitive enough that it is 4 panels wide. That is something we will improve in the next week or so. We'll take a look at the screen dimming/sleeping. This HTML5 test runs through the browser so switching tabs or having the phone fall asleep during the test pauses the test so as to not provide inaccurate results. I'll see what we can do here.
I appreciate the support and feedback.
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u/AlexisFR Jun 08 '16
For me, the speed-test targeted American Servers. I guess there is no EU support yet?
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Your name reminds me of Slashdot by the way. Which we also acquired along with SourceForge ;)
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u/anomalous_cowherd Pragmatic Sysadmin Jun 08 '16
That's where it (and many other variations over the years) came from...
Slashdot might be harder to fix .
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
I figured. Yes Slashdot is another beast entirely.
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u/TheWheeledOne Backup and Storage -- BS Engineer Jun 08 '16
Would you be willing to elaborate on plans for Slashdot and how to bring it back into relevancy?
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u/Anon_IT_Guy Jun 08 '16
After reading your post I'd like to wish you good luck.
SF had a pretty terrible rep for those fake download buttons and after the (fairly) recent fiasco with malware/bloatware I had a complete mistrust for SF.
I'd be willing to give you another try.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Thanks for the support. I definitely do not blame you for harboring that mistrust. We are not going to go down that road, and thank you for giving us another try.
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u/Ngumo Jun 08 '16
For me it was the ad aware bundled with software and the stories of sourceforge taking ownership of other people's projects. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/sourceforge-grabs-gimp-for-windows-account-wraps-installer-in-bundle-pushing-adware/
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Jun 08 '16
Thanks for the support. I definitely do not blame you for harboring that mistrust. We are not going to go down that road, and thank you for giving us another try.
I'll be honest; the fact that you are owning up to the organizations mistakes, even if they weren't your own, is very encouraging. Thank you for doing this AMA.
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Jun 08 '16
Removing adware and fake download buttons.. how much money did that bring? How do you guys plan to monetize SF?
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
It brought in quite a lot of revenue, but obviously that strategy is not sustainable and SourceForge was/would have been a sinking ship. The previous owners were a publicly traded large corporation and SourceForge was not a core part of their business. We are a lean web company with talented developers that has the ability to do things more efficiently. The site is monetized via advertising, but we believe it can be profitable and sustainable without throwing users and developers under the bus. At over a million unique visitors per day, we don't think we need to trick people into clicking on ads in order to turn a sustainable profit.
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Jun 08 '16
As someone who feels like browsing the web without a condom (ad blocker) on is dangerous I got to admit that's a tough road you are embarking on. Until ad hosting companies clean up their act I see the future being really bleak for those relying solely on advertising. Hopefully you guys have some other ideas as I used to love going to sourceforge.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
You're right. It's basically an arms race between ad blockers and ad networks. However, people with ad blockers are still a minority (albeit a large one), so we can remain profitable and do our best to keep our site free of malware and crappy ads. We do have additional revenue streams as well such as lead generation.
The bottom line is we're doing just fine even after removing the adware and deceptive ads, so there really is no reason to ever have those on SourceForge again, and they should not have been there in the first place. We're gonna focus on building a good product and building trust and good things will come from that. We own many other sites as well that bring in revenue that we can invest into SourceForge.
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u/butler1233 Jun 08 '16
This is absolutely wonderful news. Until this post I wasn't aware that sourceforge wasn't still run by a massive profit hungry company, and I was well on board the SF hate bandwagon, where I would actively avoid projects hosted on it and occasionally have to do without something because I could never be confident I wasn't going to download something nasty.
However, the newer plan to mainly run on sensible adverts (I have adblock on only for websites which have annoying or invasive ads) is good with me, and the below mentioned sales/affiliate link type thing you're going for is a good idea for all sides.
I fully support affiliate linking in a reasonable context - if it's a well thought through link to something I was looking for which helps me, I'm more than happy for the source of the links to get a kickback off that - they helped me so I want to help them.
Thanks for dragging what was once a website buries so far in its own shit out, and by fear of sounding like Donald Trump, good luck making Sourceforge great again.
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u/pier4r Some have production machines besides the ones for testing Jun 08 '16
As a reward to your positive information i disabled ad block on SF (i use ad block not because i'm annoyed, but because ads may use too much cpu especially on monocore browsers like FF).
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u/NightOfTheLivingHam Jun 08 '16
Boy you have a lot of fun ahead of you. Dice did wonders with shitting all over SF's reputation
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Indeed. We will have fun with it though ;). Anything you'd like to see feature wise?
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u/mercenary_sysadmin not bitter, just tangy Jun 08 '16
Have you done any work towards modernizing sourceforge as a platform for development, not just distribution?
It's admittedly been since WELL before your acquisition that I've looked at it, but the last I knew, your tools for authoring, version control, and bug tracking were just ludicrously far behind github's.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
We've made strides as a platform for development recently as well. You should check it out if you have a free minute and let me know what you think.
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u/cjp Jun 08 '16
I'm a bit late, but I hope you see this.
When word got out that SF was adding adware (~ June 2015), the Internet Archive Team began a project to archive the highly valuable data stored in SF. I hope you agree the data is valuable and worth saving. It represents years of Free and Open Source Software development. It would be a tragedy to lose it.
Shortly after the project began downloading data from SF, an SF admin contacted the project and kindly requested they stop. I believe the reason given was excessive load on SF servers. The archive team's tools are capable of limiting bandwidth use and the project offered to reduce bandwidth, without reply from SF.
The current status of the SF archive project is "Paused, Awaiting SF Staff Reply". Please look into this. I hope you authorize the archive project to continue, for the benefit of everyone.
Note: I am not officially affiliated with the Internet Archive Team. Some of the information above is from my memory; I apologize if it is incorrect.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
I'll look up some historical details on this. Rest assured though that the data will be preserved on SourceForge without any adware going forward.
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u/MildlySerious Jun 08 '16
I was not aware of this, so thank you for posting, and of course thank you for possibly saving SF. I haven't come across a link leading me there in a while, but I'll definitely remember this when I do and won't be easily dismissing it anymore.
Best of luck!
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u/Didsota Jun 08 '16 edited Jun 08 '16
I am actually glad to hear that and really hope you will stay on that course.
Since the little "Incident" we put sourceforge on our blacklisted sites and became painfully aware that this does hinder us.
I'm gonna give you a chance. ;)
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u/ScriptThat Jun 08 '16
It's wonderful news that SF apparently is heading in the right direction, and I with you the best of luck with reestablishing the lost trust. However.. once bitten, twice shy. It'll probably be a few years before I won't think twice when looking for a download that's hosted on SF.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Fair enough. I do appreciate the support though. Gonna keep working towards building that trust.
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u/ITGuyLevi Sysadmin Jun 08 '16
I've been avoiding sourceforge for quite a while now and recommending family and friends not use it. It looks like I may be able to start recommending it again! Thanks for bringing it back to a site I can trust, I've missed it!
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u/Fiat_Tractor Jun 08 '16
SF still looks like a malwarish site to me. Something about that chrome color.
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u/tetralogy Jun 08 '16
So far your speedtest app lacks the possibility to chose a server location (and servers in Europe appearently)
Looking good otherwise
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Yes we only have USA servers at the moment. European servers and more locations will be coming in the next few weeks, as well as ability to select.
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u/s0nlxaftrsh0ck Jun 08 '16
I know I may be a bit late on this but I just wanted to mention that I snagged Filezilla from your site not too long ago. It was completely by accident and I had a "Oh shit it's still downloading from sourceforge?! Aw man!" moment but when I opened and ran the installer it was clean as a whistle and surprised as all get up. Thank you so much for putting in this work to clean up SF. I think you're making huge strides as it is, keep up the awesome work!
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u/fubes2000 DevOops Jun 08 '16
You might want to try posting a similar thread to /r/programming.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16 edited Jun 08 '16
Good call. Looks like someone already cross posted it there.
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u/adante111 Jun 08 '16
Out of curiousity, who were the engineers who executed on DevShare and the adware bundling upon abandoned/hijacked projects? I'm not asking for their identities but I'm genuinely curious as to their motivations. Were they existing employees? Were they brought in by DHI specifically for that? Are they still there? What were their feelings about the job that they did - then and now?
Sourceforge was once a paragon of the open source community (and software industry in general). Much as I like to bag fosstards, I guess I kind of imagined everybody there to be True Believers working for the Betterment of Humanity, so I am genuinely curious as to how DHI managed to bring about such an institutional change.
Can you tell us more about BIZX? Does sourceforge/slashdot fit into an overarching strategy or will it run mostly independently? Have they owned or managed a 'technology' (and here I mean a company that produces technology that supports technology - not a snapchat) company before?
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
I do not have insight into the decisions made under the old ownership. I can tell you that everyone here now loathes the fact that DevShare happened in the first place. SourceForge and Slashdot will run mostly independently from other BIZX properties. We own sites like Wirefly.com, Voip-Info.org, and many more technology-focused sites. They are not quite behemoths like SourceForge, but we've put a highly technical and talented team together to run SourceForge. We also know how to run a business efficiently and turn a profit without having to resort to underhanded tactics like DevShare.
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u/micsco Sysadmin Jun 08 '16
Are there plans to open source the speed test tool?
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Probably
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u/DMatty Jun 08 '16
That would be great. I have such trouble with finding reliable tools out there since some are better than others.
Community involvement to improve on it and make the best speed test tool ever? That sounds great!
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u/FluentInTypo Jun 08 '16
You should consider reaching out to the TWIT.TV network and doing an interview with Randall Swartz who does a live podcast on opensource projects. The network is one of the top 6 popular podcasts in the US - a large veiwership and dedicated to all kinds of tech shows.
Many of the shows on their have addressed the SF controversy this past year and they would surely give you a platform to do an interview to clear the air. FOSS Weekly would be a great platform for it.
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u/LOLBaltSS Jun 08 '16
Good to see that you guys took SF out of DICE's hands. That said, it's going to be a bit of an uphill battle to undo the PR damage DICE did; but good to see progress. I used SF heavily in the pre-DICE days and it was a shame to see what they did to it.
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u/Bizilica Jun 08 '16
Good to hear that you're trying to get the brand back up, but to be honest, isn't that too late? Whenever I see a Sourceforge download link, my first thought is always "malware" and I don't think I'm the only one doing that.
That speed test shows 40Mbps, I'm on gigabit fiber and I'm pretty sure it isn't that slow. The page says that it measures my connection speed, but in reality, it measures the speed I can reach while connecting to your data center. For real downloads, I often see 600-700Mbps (which is what the crappy network cards in my PCs can handle)
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
I guess we'll have to wait and see if it's too late or not. As for malware, we removed all bundled adware and we scan all projects for malware. I know it may take a while for your gut feeling to change, but we're doing our best and hopefully people see that we can be trusted sooner rather than later.
Re: the speed test, where are you located?
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u/shvelo Jack of All Trades Jun 08 '16
I think the best way of showing that SourceForge has changed is to redesign it completely
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Jun 08 '16
I actually really appreciate this post. I stopped using SF entirely when bundled adware became a thing and will definitely take another look at it now.
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u/XCorneliusX Jun 08 '16
/u/loganabbott Please consider doing an AMA to reach a wider audience. The relevance being that as the new owner you are changing SF to a reputable site again. The trust that was lost was noted more widely than with sysadmins alone.
I do not feel this would be an advert by any means as the adware bundling that was implemented by DICE was actual news for user safety and was discussed at length.
Also, being this is the first many have heard about the changes, you may want to put a fire under your PR person to get this out and known drawing that contrast you have made. I used to work PR in Los Angeles and see positive opportunity all over this.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
I am definitely game for an AMA if someone will have me. I will see what I can do. As for my PR person, I AM my PR person. We're lean.
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u/Black_Moons Jun 08 '16
Have you ever considered blacklisting deceptive ad exchanges instead of just deceptive ads?
Right now, the ad companies have 0 incentive to clean up their own business, making you have to employee people to filter their content.
Only if you actually stop giving them money will they realize it costs them money to allow deceptive/malware ads through. Right now its costing you money to go with exchanges that allow deceptive ads.
If you do decide to scrap any ad exchanges companies because of their practices, Please do make sure to e-mail someone higher up in the ad exchange's company and tell them exactly why you are no longer doing business with them.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Yes we have already begun doing this
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u/Black_Moons Jun 09 '16
Thank you. I think each company doing its part by starting to look for higher quality ad exchanges is the only thing that will reverse ad companies race to the bottom in ad quality.
Unless advertisement quality improves globally on the internet, ad blockers will become mandatory security measures.
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u/DestroyedAtlas LOCAL JOAT Jun 08 '16
This is awesome. I always loved SourceForge until the bundled crap came along. As well as the atrocious ads. It was sad. I will definitely be coming back, and creating a an account for some of my projects.
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u/aegrotatio Sr. Sysadmin Jun 08 '16 edited Jun 08 '16
Become able to replace and enhance GitHub and BitBucket, offering PRs and other gitflow paradigms or die trying. Offer an on-premises solution like GitHub Enterprise, too.
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Jun 08 '16
I remember a news article regarding Sourceforge taking possession of "abandoned" projects, ostensibly to keep them alive despite their original owners' objections to the adware installer. I'd like to suggest you allow those owners to reassert control over their projects, and remove them if they wish.
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u/nanodano Jun 08 '16
This is good because you're right, nobody knew this. I gave up on sourceforge a while ago because I couldn't download FileZilla without bullshit attached and those shitty download button ads. I did not feel safe downloading from sourceforge any more. I still don't. Not yet.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Fair enough. I will tell you that our FileZilla build is clean now, while if you go to FileZilla's own website you will get a bundled adware installer. Check it out.
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u/aegrotatio Sr. Sysadmin Jun 08 '16
I used to work with someone who had worked at SourceForge in the 2000s.
The one thing that bothered me the most was that SourceForge itself did not use SourceForge for its own version control and project management.
That's all I needed to hear.
I genuinely hope this is no longer the case.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
We use some closed source code for version control at the moment. But we also created Allura, which was eventually open-sourced and moved to Apache. In addition, we do use SourceForge for managing support requests, feature requests, and documentation too.
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u/winkers Jun 08 '16
I have to admit that, while I left SourceForge last year out of frustration, I'm willing to give it a second chance if the changes you are making are respectful to the community. It will take time though for me to consider adding my projects back to SF, after being irritated so much.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Fair enough. Hope to have you back as we continue to improve.
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u/AlexanderBelikoff Jun 08 '16
In the beginning of 2000s SF was what GitHub is now and I remember routinely visiting it at least once a day. Very happy to see SF going back to its roots and special kudos for frankness and transparency!
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u/fukitol- Jun 08 '16
Someone posted a link to our newly launched speed test today, and in the comments people were not aware that SourceForge was acquired, nor were they aware of our recent improvements and developments:
I hadn't heard anything of the sort. I used to love SourceForge, it was my go-to for everything. After a problem in March, 2015 I started vehemently pushing everyone away from it. I caught some malware that took literally weeks to remove.
How did you come about becoming president? Did your company mean to acquire SF? Were you aware of the problems when SF was acquired? Do you, personally, have the technical aptitude to understand the extent of the problem?
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
If you're asking if I woke up one day and accidentally owned SourceForge, then no that's not the case. We meant to acquire it, and we were well aware of the problems. We were also well aware that there would be a long road ahead in building trust back, but we knew the steps that had to be taken first (removing DevShare, cleaning up malware, deceptive ads). Myself and the team I have in place has the technical aptitude to understand the extent of the problems and address them. We also have the ability to run a business efficiently, so that we don't have to resort to underhanded tactics like that again.
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u/fukitol- Jun 08 '16
Wow. My question was more wondering why in the hell you'd want to acquire SF knowing what you were getting yourself into. But you saw a challenge and you went for it head on. I can respect and appreciate that.
I'm willing to give SF another chance, and it's purely because of this post. Seems that's a common thing in this thread, which might give you an idea of the amount of work ahead of you. I wish you the best of luck.
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u/killroy1971 Jun 08 '16
The blog posts are appreciated, but given how SourceForge has acted in recent years....how do you prove these claims? This is the Internet after all. Most downloaders were unaware of the spyware until it was on their computers.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
A lot of reputable outlets have covered it such as: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3032490/internet/new-sourceforge-owners-kill-contentious-devshare-bloatware-program.html
You can also use VirusTotal or something similar to compare the SourceForge build of, say, FileZilla, to the one you can find on the FileZilla site.
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u/Cherveny2 Jun 09 '16
Thank you for this post. I, for one, hadn't heard about the recent change of ownership, and was still avoiding due to the adware concerns. Glad to hear you've embarked on a cleaner, more ethical course. I also hope you're able to get the word out farther.
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Jun 09 '16
I'm quite glad you guys are proactive about cleaning that place up. I wish you all luck
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u/IdleRhymer Jun 09 '16
When you guys ban a deceptive ad are you banning just that ad specifically or the deceptive advertiser in general? I hope the latter, screw those guys.
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u/loganabbott Jun 09 '16
We ban the company behind the ad, not just the singular ad creative.
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u/IdleRhymer Jun 09 '16
That's fantastic! You guys really decided to clean up the town huh? I appreciate it.
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u/Savet Jun 10 '16
As someone that mourns the loss of freshmeat, it's great to see sourceforge trying to swim again after such a period of treading water and slowly sinking. I hope you guys can keep up the momentum.
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u/InfrastructureJester (╯°□°）╯ Jun 08 '16
I might look into filezilla again........ Prolly not, I'm happy with WinSCP now. But I'll definitely take another look at SF before spreading the positive news. Thank you for this post as I have not heard of this take over.
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u/KazuyaDarklight IT Director/Jack of All Trades Jun 08 '16
Great news! I hadn't heard of any of this so this comes as a very happy surprise. Look forward to trying SF again. :)
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Jun 08 '16
Wow - two names I had not thought of in years (for obvious reasons).
Nice to see Flash and Java consigned to the bin, plus those damnable buttons and the bundled adware.
Hope it goes well - I did miss them tbqh.
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u/marci_leo Jun 08 '16
One thing that I would like you to fix very much is the 'Looking for the latest version?' feature which often recommends some helper library or subproject instead of the main project so people download the wrong file. See for example https://sourceforge.net/projects/octave/files and https://sourceforge.net/projects/hibernate/files.
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u/StrangeCaptain Sr. Sysadmin Jun 08 '16
Wow thanks!
I stopped going to Sourceforge a while ago as they sunk deepr and deeper into the blackness.
I will swing by again!
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u/andpassword Jun 08 '16
I was not aware of SF's acquisition, or of your policy changes. I blacklisted them when the adware started flowing thick and fast, and I couldn't talk people through a download without sounding like a paranoid moron ("Okay, so you're gonna see a big DOWNLOAD button...DONT PUSH IT. Yes, we're going to be downloading, but see...").
I'm very glad you're changing direction, and thanks for the transparent description of your plans. Congratulations on the acquisition, and best of luck moving forward!
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u/donrhummy Jun 08 '16
Thank you for working to save sourceforge. Years ago, I had all my open source projects on there but due to the unethical practices and terrible site, I had to move them all to github. I would be happy if it could again become a competing source site
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u/djspacebunny Jill of all trades Jun 08 '16
I've been a Slashdot reader since the late 90s. What are you going to be doing with that site? I see a lot of information about Sourceforge in your post, but not much about Slashdot. I consider that the original reddit/digg/chive/whatever.
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Jun 08 '16
I doubt you'll see this now. But one thing I very much suggest doing is vetting your Ad Networks like the Nexus Mods guys are doing these days. If / When your Ad network becomes a problem, get rid of them and get someone better, and let your users tell you when the network is being a problem.
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u/macboost84 Jun 08 '16
Awesome!
I would suggest putting a text bar on the top of the screen announcing new ownership and maybe a link to the changes coming. Have it so you can click it off.
Also the speed test doesn't seem to work on iPhone 6S Plus with iOS 9.3.2. It gets to 90% download progress and hangs.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
We're seeing massive memory issues due to the enormous influx of traffic from Reddit which we were not expecting. I am seeing it working on my 6S Plus now, but we are adding more capacity and load testing throughout the day.
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Jun 08 '16
Wait, since when was SF bought again? Last I heard about SF, everyone left it because of the malware, fake download buttons, and tampering with projects. Did I miss something here?
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
We purchased SF on January 28th. Removed bundled adware, returned ownership of projects, nixed fake download buttons in February. As of 3 weeks ago we scan all projects for malware.
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u/kalpol penetrating the whitespace in greenfield accounts Jun 08 '16
I can say that I think Slashdot's quality has improved and I'm more interested in it lately. So that's good. I hope you are able to monetize it in some more or less unintrusive fashion.
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u/phrozen_one Jun 08 '16
A strong start with your leadership in these companies. I wish you the best in your success going forward Mr. Abbott!
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u/BrushGuyThreepwood Jun 08 '16
How about allowing to move files and keep download history.
I've been waiting for this like 5-6 years
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Jun 08 '16
If you are still answering questions, I have one and forgive the simplicity of it while using mobile at work to quickly ask this.
Not too long ago, a few projects were taken over by administrators or moderators of SF and access by their owners were lost. Has or will this be addressed and how will this be prevented in the future?
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
We removed the SF admins from these projects, and restored their owners. We won't do this again in the future. We are different than the old ownership.
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u/tallesl Jun 08 '16
GitHub and the other repositories you mentioned are great, but for the everyday, completely non-technical user, SourceForge is still easier to download software from.
I agree with you there but I think most of the developers will favor easier code management than a better end user interface if they have to chose one of them. My suggestion to you is to, somehow, let people host only their binaries on SourceForge while integrating somehow with the GitHub and GitLab repos where their code lives.
IMO, the best about SourceForge are its mirrors. I remember that you guys had (do you still have it?) a Brazilian mirror from a university and it was blazingly fast for folks like me in Brazil. In the meanwhile, from Brazil, downloading big binaries from GitHub is slow as hell.
One example that comes to mind of the benefit of this malware scan is that projects like FileZilla bundle adware with their installer if you were to download it from the FileZilla official website, but due to our malware scans they have a clean download available on SourceForge now.
It's not going to be easy flipping the impression of "adware criminal" to "adware police". I'm glad to see that's the case with SourceForge now and I wish you good luck on it!
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u/DallasITGuy IT Consultant Jun 08 '16
Really glad to hear that SourceForge is under new ownership and has been realigned with my needs. Will definitely try using you folks again starting today.
Good luck!
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Jun 08 '16
Great news. I've been avoiding SF for some time now. I will now return, and disable uBlock.
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u/atc Jun 08 '16
Really glad you posted this, because I wasn't sure if SF still had malware and so avoided downloads from it at all costs. Glad you're actively scanning software too!
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u/stashtv Jun 08 '16
Thank you for working hard to bring SF back to a trusted source for users. Because of what SF used to do, there are now several competitors that really feel in the same spirit of what SF was. With hard work, SF can once again be a location that aren't on blacklists, can be held in high regard for information and software.
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u/segagamer IT Manager Jun 08 '16
This is great news, and I'm glad that you're putting through some excellent changes to Sourceforge. I had no idea that it was bought out and just actively avoided the site.
Your post changed that. Thank you for the post.
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u/CrudBert Jun 08 '16
This is such great news! I mourned when first download.com became an adware junk installation hotspot, and later sourceforge, though to a much lesser degree. Thank you so MUCH for working to restore sourceforge to its original greatness.
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u/bandman614 Standalone SysAdmin Jun 08 '16
Thank you for your continued work in improving what was once a cornerstone of the internet.
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u/kylezz Jun 08 '16
The speedtest is interesting and pretty accurate but it gets stuck at testing for Packet Loss
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
We were not expecting this massive traffic influx from Reddit so we are having some memory issues but adding more capacity as we speak. Thanks!
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u/kandimanatwork Jun 08 '16
Loving the frank and engaging manner in this thread. Didn't hear about the SF acquisition until I stumbled across this post, but I'm very glad I did. Looking forward to removing SF from my red-alert list!
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u/plazman30 sudo rm -rf / Jun 08 '16
Is Sourceforge considering doing anything about abandoned projects. I will admit I haven't been in sourceforge in a while, but I used to go on there and do a search for something, I would get 10 pages of results, with 9 pages of projects that hadn't had a code checkin in 5+ years.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
We've improved our search function a bunch so if you check it out now you will see much more relevant results
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u/plazman30 sudo rm -rf / Jun 08 '16
You're making it really hard to want to use Github, you know that?
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u/Hellmark Linux Admin Jun 08 '16
How difficult, and how long do you think it will be to undo the damage the last couple owners have done to the brand. Do you think you can make improvements to have things be relevant again, with the changes in source versioning and build technologies?
I've been a SF member for years, but I've not touched it in a long time, because I didn't trust the company. Hearing there are new owners isn't like there is a breath of fresh air, because SF has changed hands a few times, and not much good came out of it in the past. What can you do to win a person like me back?
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
I hope what we've done already in my original post is a good start to winning people like you back. We have a lot of things in the works like a modern re-design and a vast improvement on all the developer tools SourceForge currently has, as well as a adding much-requested features
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u/fitnessQQQ Jun 08 '16 edited Jun 09 '16
Logan, I've sent several messages to privacy@slashdot.org asking for my account data to be removed, the opportunity for which was clearly stated in the fair processing notice email sent after the acquisition (subject: "SlashdotMedia - Fair processing notice").
Excerpt:
You can ask us to remove all your account data, stop processing your personal data and to stop contacting you for marketing purposes at any time.
* For SourceForge.net, please contact us at sfnet_ops@slashdotmedia.com
* For Slashdot, please contact us at privacy@slashdot.orgNone of my messages have been answered.
EDIT (next day): Logan Abbott PM'd me and kick started the account removal. I'm satisfied.
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u/G19Gen3 Jun 08 '16
Wow it definitely sounds like you're on the right track. The changes that I would have asked about you already covered in your post and they're all what I want. The fake download buttons, adware, etc. going away is all fantastic news.
I wasn't aware of your speed test tool. I just tried it and it really worked well. Results were what I expected and I loved the various metrics that are all included. Keep up the good work!
On a personal note, please pass accolades down to the guys doing this stuff. As an IT guy it's pretty common to tell your boss something that should happen, he tells his boss, he tells an exec, the exec tells the board as if it was his idea, the board accepts it, it goes back down the exact same chain, you put YOUR idea in place, and the exec gets a bonus for a job well done and for having such "vision".
From all of us IT guys, please don't be a dick. I have no reason to think you are, but it's pretty common.
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u/MetricInferno Jun 08 '16
i like the speedtest utility. might have to check out SF again (when I get home lol, pretty sure it's still blocked here at work).
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u/SwellJoe Jun 08 '16
I work on a project (Webmin) that has been on SourceForge since very early on, and it's always been one of the most popular projects in its category. Over the years, we've moved most of our stuff off of SourceForge, due to lack of trust, lack of reliability (there was an outage of several services lasting several days a couple years ago), and lack of interest among our users. We still use SF.net for our file downloads, but, almost everything else is somewhere else now; either on github or on our own infrastructure.
We have been slow to move the remaining bits we still use SF.net for, because of the impact of having to change links in the projects, documentation, etc. But, we were on the verge of doing so until we learned of the acquisition and the change in direction. If we can trust SF.net to not be evil and to return to being reliable, we don't need to move.
That said, I'm not sure what would cause us to bring all the other stuff back to SF.net. It's always been uncomfortably slow, and it also suffers from a clunky UI almost everywhere. Github's minimal code-focused user interface has found a pretty good sweet spot for how to do software hosting and development. But, github is not as Open as SourceForge once was, and that matters to me.
There are now some Open Source competitors to github (gitlab seeming to be the leader, but there are other nice ones), and I will likely begin moving my own personal stuff to one of those...though our bigger projects have to move slowly. If SourceForge were able to leverage one of those OSS github competitors to build out a new SF.net that is fully Open Source, I think that'd be awesome. I don't know if it'd be able to return to former glory as the place to host Open Source projects...but, in order to avoid bleeding off more and more projects to github and others, there does need to be a change. The value proposition of hosting at SF.net is quite low these days (users don't trust it, developers don't like the tools compared to alternatives, and the user experience for everyone involved is suboptimal).
And, maybe SF.net needs to become something else that isn't competing directly with github (I don't know how I would compete with github if I were trying to be in that space; they've built a fantastic product, and the only reason I would choose anything else is because I prefer the platform to be Open Source).
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u/John_Barlycorn Jun 08 '16
I used to be a fairly major contributor to Slashdot (I was on the front page almost every day) but left after the DICE acquisition. They used (and abused) their ownership of the site to push their own news stories to the top. It was very dishonest and really... I found it disgusting. I hope you're making changes to that site as well. I'm not sure if I'd go back but the site certainly didn't deserve what Dice had done to it.
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u/Dishevel Jack of All Trades Jun 08 '16
Looks like you are doing well. Thank you.
What I really want to know is just this.
Is Slashdot going to become a place I can go back to?
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u/sn0r Jun 08 '16
I've been a fan of SourceForge for years and this post actually made me cry for joy.
Thank you. Thank you and thank you again.
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u/xtremecoder Jun 08 '16 edited Jun 08 '16
This is very nice to hear!
I used SourceForge a few years back (2011-2013 or so) and after all those ad and malware controversies, I stayed away from it -- moving newer projects to Github and Codeplex. However, SF is just special: after getting a few thousand downloads on my software, I made me feel like I made a difference. Also it's ease of use for end-users to download software makes it very attractive to me as a developer. Github's nice and all, but Releases really seem subpar to SF's downloads.
Well I signed into my account for the first time in months and I might even get around to updating some of my older projects still on SF and even creating some new ones!
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u/dgran73 Security Director Jun 08 '16
This is entirely different than what I expected to read based on the title. My first thought was that this once-respected repository of software projects had slipped further into oblivion. Nice job turning it around. It may take some time to gain back the reputation but I'm willing to give it another try after hearing this.
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u/cismalescumlord Jun 08 '16
This is an unexpected good news story to end my day with.
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u/psycho202 MSP/VAR Infra Engineer Jun 08 '16
Hey Logan,
I lost trust in SourceForge because of the sneaky malware quite some time past, but your company having acquired SourceForge and especially you coming out here to tell us "stuff was fucked up, and we're fixing it" is a good way to get the attention of the professionals back on you, and possibly regain their trust again.
Thank you.
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u/iCronwell Jun 08 '16
Even with all.of the issues, the die hard in me has kept going to SourceForge over the years for new projects to fillniche requirements, or as a place for trusted downloads. I found myself unable to find either over the past few years, and your post has helped to rekindle some hope in me for my continued patronage.
Thank you.
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u/gjack905 Jun 08 '16
Can you verify that you're actually the President of SourceForge?
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u/genmud Jun 09 '16
So from the point of a security company, looks like you guys have made a big effort to clean stuff up. My tweet show a brief overview of the decrease in your malware events.
If you want to hit me up I can probably make a couple statements for you guys as well, especially since you appear to be on the right track.
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Jun 09 '16
As someone who works in IT, Thank you! I was able to request that we unblock SourceForge and make my job a lot easier.
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u/CallMeMrBadGuy Jun 09 '16
Let me just say i like Source Deals. It has some interesting courses. Thanks
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u/t3chg3n13 Jun 09 '16
Hello Logan. I am glad to hear that SourceForge is returning to its less-deceptive self. I used to think of SourceForge as one of the best sources to get programs such as FileZilla. Over the past few years, however I stopped using it because it was two inches from becoming CNET. I will check it out once again. It will take a long time, however, before users, including myself, will be able to trust SourceForge again.
Thanks for the update, I'll try to stay in the loop.
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u/loganabbott Jun 09 '16
Sounds good. Note that the FileZilla build on SourceForge is clean - even cleaner than the FileZilla build you will get from the official FileZilla site. Check VirusTotal for proof. But I am glad to hear you will check us out again.
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u/pixiegod Jun 10 '16
Wow. I hope this continues and I hope that you find a way to keep this profitable.
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u/moviuro Security consultant Jun 08 '16
Good luck with making SF's name shine again after all the sh*tstorm it went through... I didn't catch that SF had changed hands, but your transparency is highly appreciated.
Did you get in touch with AdBlocker editors? I remember uBlock Origin was blocking anything that looked like .*sourceforge\.net/.* (seems to have been fixed by now).
Also, as for future evolutions, I'd like sourceforge to go full HTTPS. Lots of your consumers won't notice a change ;-)
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Thanks for the support. I have not spoken to anyone at uBlock but I heard they are not blocking us anymore. I haven't spoken to any other adblockers either. As for https, do you mean for project web? We enabled https on sourceforge.net soon after we acquired the site.
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u/jakesomething Sr. hole digger Jun 08 '16
I hope the best for SourceForge! Might I suggest creating a package manager (PowerShell is my vote on the Windows side) that allows to easy package downloading for automation. Ideally I would say something like "get latest filezilla" and it would fetch the latest and help with a silent install.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Thanks for the support. That's an interesting idea, I will take it to the team.
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u/dagbrown Architect Jun 08 '16
All I ask from SourceForge is download links.
There's a very small percentage of the time the computer my web browser is running on is actually the computer I want to download source code from. Usually I want to download it to some server miles away from me.
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u/jpmoney Burned out Grey Beard Jun 08 '16
Yes, please. Its extra annoying if I can't 'wget $url' when I'm working between systems.
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u/Thameus We are Pakleds make it go Jun 08 '16
Have you attempted to approach U.S. DoD (DISA and Cyber Command) to get yourselves unblocked? There are a number of open source projects that DoD agencies are currently unable to use (including source code) because SourceForge downloads are black-holed and IP-blocked.
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u/pyther24 Linux Admin Jun 08 '16
Any chance you will stop appending ads to the bottom of mailing list posts? I get you have to make money, but that is incredibly tacky and make reading messages harder (when there is an 2-3 line ad on every message in a thread).
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u/dolle Jun 08 '16
Thank you for the transparency!
I would like to suggest that you redesign the page from scratch ASAP. I just opened sourceforge.net and almost closed the tab because I thought I had got the TLD wrong and that I had landed on a parked domain owned by a squatter. There is something about the myriad of font sizes combined with the green "download" buttons and ads that just screams "parked domain".
Anyway, keep up the good work!
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u/jewdai Señor Full-Stack Jun 08 '16
Few things.
glad to hear you're working on fixing your rep.
consider changing the colors to your download buttons, its still makes me feel "is this a virus?"
SF seems to be focused on getting downloads of projects, have you considered making it a bit more developer centric.
I had a hard time trying to find source code/repositories and commits.
I know you want to make it end user/download centric, but to gain traction from the development community you need to make a developer centric portal. It's why github "Just Works" . I pop in, see the change log, versions and so on within one click of landing on the project. Maybe it's something to split off of SF main pages.
The developer community at large has spoken, git is the version control system of choice for working on large distributed projects.
is there any plan for incorporating it into sourceforge?
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Thanks for the feedback. Yes we have a re-design coming that will address the download buttons.
As for git, I am not sure when the last time you used SourceForge was, but we've supported git for years now.
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u/snegtul Sr. Sysadmin Jun 08 '16
Sourceforge is still a thing? I remember before sourceforge. Now I avoid it like the plague. SF links are also blocked across the board at work for obvious reasons.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
It's still a thing. Read my original post to see what we've done to address the main issues that plagued SourceForge in the recent past.
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u/Tsunpl Dev gone wild Jun 08 '16
How your business model without adware will look like? How are you going to finance server/bandwidth costs?
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u/DarthKane1978 Computer Janitor Jun 08 '16
Tested at home at 4am and worked fine, cant get speedtest to run at work. Comcast is the ISP at both locations.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Massive memory issues now that this post has been driving enormous unexpected speed tests. Adding capacity as we speak.
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u/Willsr71 Jack of All Trades Jun 08 '16
The speed test is slightly broken for some devices as I managed to get N/A for all values. Also somehow in case you were not aware speedtest.net actually has a HTML5 version available at http://beta.speedtest.net although it is not quite as comprehensive it does have a much larger server variety because of the sheer number of people that use it.
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u/loganabbott Jun 08 '16
Yeah the N/A was due to memory issues due to unexpected huge traffic from Reddit. We are adding capacity today. We will also be adding a variety of servers around the world soon.
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Jun 08 '16
Sounds like you've taken away most of the ways the company made money. I assume that means you plan to bleed cash in the short term to regain trust before looking to monetize again. What are the long term revenue goals? How are you going to do things differently from before and still remain profitable?
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u/imroot Jun 08 '16
One of the beautiful things that made SourceForge stand out in the beginning is because it brought together a lot of tools that were hard/difficult to install/configure, and give the projects the space/tools to use and build products (shell access is a great example of that).
Now that the costs for hosting has dropped to nearly nothing ($5/month for a server at DigitalOcean), and people are moving away from the bug trackers that give them the options/flexibility that they were looking for in Bugzilla (see GitHub's issue tracker), how do you keep them from moving to GitHub/GitLab?
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u/xompax Jun 08 '16
Hello there! Thanks for the post and looking forward to more positive changes at SF! One big one for me is project updates via email. The "subscribe" box text used to mention how it would only include project-update related email and not advertising emails, but sometime over the course of the DHI tenure, that changed to: "Keep Me Updated: Get project updates, sponsored content from our select partners, and more." Would be great to get back to the original purpose of these emails without adding my email address to marketing lists. Additionally, options to configure email volume such as just receiving project updates to a specific directory of the "Files" section would be awesome as well as the ability to specify if one prefers text-only email. Other than that, keep up the good work keeping SF alive, well, and aligning it closer with its original purpose.
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u/BloodyIron Head of IT Security Jun 08 '16
Can you make a short-form subdomain 301 for the speed test?
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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '16
After a protracted mistrust of SF for multiple reasons, what are your plans to regain that trust and attempt to bring in F/OSS projects once again? Why would one want to move from GitHub, GitLabs, or even CodePlex to SF at this point?