| SourceForge spent many years making decisions that sank its reputation. I don't think that's going to dramatically turn around overnight. HOWEVER... it bums me out when a bad actor makes legitimate efforts to turn their act around, and get mostly shit and snark for it. Paraphrasing: * "I would never download something from them no matter who owns the company now, because the previous owners sucked and I'm emotionally invested in disliking the brand." * "This speed test service that they just made available for no ulterior motive at all doesn't work outside the U.S. yet. Pffffft." * "Why would anyone use them instead of GitHub?" * Etc... far more nasty stuff over in Reddit discussion. Look. Years ago I switched over to GitHub (and later GitLab)... because SF was slow to adopt Git, and the interface was pretty weak once they did. There are more steps and complexity involved in setting up a full SF project than creating a simple GitHub/GitLab repo. So even now, I wouldn't consider SF for hosting a personal project Git repo if I had no intention of distributing binaries. However, SF has always been geared more toward hosting full project sites directed at end-users, rather than simply hosting a source code repo for developers. That's why they "lost" to GitHub, because it turns out that most developers just need the best source code host and don't care about distributing binaries to end-users. But if you have a project that you want to share with the world in binary form, rather than just a resume item to be seen by other developers, then SF has never had a serious challenger. GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket... none of those guys really care about competing in THAT space. So for the couple of projects that I've wanted to make end-user facing, I've continued to use SF even though my source code is over on GitLab. Bandwidth is expensive, and hosting a reliable end-user facing website is a pain in the ass, so I'm grateful that SF is there as a free option. So if you just need Git hosting, maybe you don't care. But it's fantastic that someone has stepped in and tried to right the ship, so there will continue to be a viable option for end-user facing binary hosting. I'm grateful for these guys, and hope they succeed. Seriously... we've largely started embracing Microsoft of all companies after their recent about-face. There's no reason not to be positive about SF trying to become a good actor, even if their strengths don't happen to fit your own use case. |
If there are no punishments then a rational (ie amoral) actor will betray initially and cooperate (for a while) when caught. If there's no cost for a turnaround you incentivize bad behavior.
The financially correct way to handle this is to penalize SourceForge perpetually so that it's of less value. This ties behavior to valuation and actually provides a disincentive going forward.
> we've largely started embracing Microsoft of all companies after their recent about-face.
Doesn't it seem unfair to all the honest companies out there for us to keep going back to MS? If we don't penalize their illegal past we're essentially burdening all the companies who complied with the law.
In that ecosystem when do new players get their first chance?