I'm honestly not sure if you wouldn't be better off changing the name of the service to something else at this point. People who just want to download binaries won't care what the name is, and developers who want to use the full spectrum of services will have enough bad associations with the name "SourceForge" at this point that keeping it could end up driving away more users than it attracts. And all the time and energy it'll take to rehabilitate the SourceForge brand could just as easily go towards building up some new brand instead, without all the baggage the old name carries.
(It's possible I'm overestimating how long peoples' memories are here, of course. But when I hear "SourceForge" I still think of all the bad stuff they did in the past, so presumably there are at least a few others out there like me as well.)
I'll second that. To be honest the Sourceforge brand seems like more of a liability than an asset to me.
I don't know if I'm representative of the majority, but if I need to download some software and find that it's hosted on Sourceforge, my first few thoughts are typically:
1) Wait, SourceForge injected adware. I wonder if they still do?
2) This project is probably dead, because it's still on SourceForge.
I'm sure I can be trained out of that, but I'm surprised you guys reckon it's worth the effort, rather than just using a new name.
It's interesting how often you mention they were acquired by someone else but not by whom. It cannot be a secret, but you don't seem to want the parent company known either.
I just spent an hour going down the rabbit hole. Every time I click the "owned by" link, another "owned by" reference appears.
I'm honestly not sure if you wouldn't be better off changing the name of the service to something else at this point. People who just want to download binaries won't care what the name is, and developers who want to use the full spectrum of services will have enough bad associations with the name "SourceForge" at this point that keeping it could end up driving away more users than it attracts. And all the time and energy it'll take to rehabilitate the SourceForge brand could just as easily go towards building up some new brand instead, without all the baggage the old name carries.
(It's possible I'm overestimating how long peoples' memories are here, of course. But when I hear "SourceForge" I still think of all the bad stuff they did in the past, so presumably there are at least a few others out there like me as well.)