[astrodust]

For code, layout is everything.

Consider how excruciating it is to try and view source code on SourceForge compared with GitHub. On the latter you are literally shown a listing of files with the README already open for any given repository.

Sourceforge has this absolutely useless "Download" link where you have to grab an archive, extract it, dump it into your text editor, and only then will you find out it's not what you want.

It is not an understatement to suggest that Sourceforge is by people with no idea about open source.

[nitrogen]

It is not an understatement to suggest that Sourceforge is by people with no idea about open source.

This comment is quite simply out of line. SourceForge played a crucial role in the promotion and distribution of Open Source software well over a decade ago. It was the first successful repository that freed projects from the uncertainty of university or personal web hosting, it provided collaborative development tools and multi-developer project management years ahead of Github's very existence, and continues to distribute some of the biggest names in Open Source.

Learn your history! (Man, I feel old saying that)

[astrodust]

SourceForge wasn't SourceForge back then, it was other things that were later aggregated into it. I've been on the internet before there were browsers, so I know my history.

Freshmeat was never a spectacular platform, but it was the de-facto open-source distribution center at the time. It played an important role in that environment, but was more of a distribution channel than a collaboration tool.

Today SourceForge is the GeoCities of source hosting. It has almost no redeeming features.

[nitrogen]

SourceForge may have started as something else, but it was already SourceForge by 2000. Check out my account, created January of 2000: http://sourceforge.net/users/nitrogen

It's not my intention to try to one up others with my four-digit UID. All I'm saying is, I was there, I was heavily involved in Open Source at the time, and SourceForge was critical.

Edit to add: Geocities was pretty important to the development of the web, too. Part of me prefers the days when everyone made their own eye-gouging web site instead of relying on Facebook. There was a much more eclectic selection of content available back then.

[count]

> There was a much more eclectic selection of content available back then.

Really? On Geocities and the web in the 90s?

Just because you stopped looking for new content and 'web rings' fell out of style, doesn't mean it all went away and the only thing on the Internet is now Facebook. There are nearly 200M active websites on the Internet, with 55M of those alone being Wordpress sites (which I'd suggest is in competition with Tumblr, et. al to inherit the 'geocities' throne). In 2000, there weren't even 50M individual websites.

I think you might be viewing history through some rose-colored glasses, open source or otherwise.

I do agree that SF.net (and /.) played a central role in Open Source, and was fantastic at the time. It's a well worn turd now, compared to it's younger, more nimble competition.

It does have the benefit that it only (afaik) hosts OSS though - as was mentioned the other day, there are thousands of projects where the code is available on github, but there's no license allowing any form of derivative or other use.

[xtracto]

I remember the early 90s web being full of electronic DIY pages with very interesting projects and tutorials.

Nowadays, it is kind of hard to find good sites specialized in that which are free.

Oh, and back then there we did not need to install adblock plus to make navigating the web a bearable experience.

[zeruch]

Github would never have existed without SF. That isn't to defend what SF has become, but to put it in context; to pretend that all its progeny (and they are exactly that) somehow don't owe something to that (not reverence, but just an acknowledgement...because that actually does matter as a learning exercise) is a bit daft.

[coffeeaddicted]

Download contains the easy to use end-packages for users. I guess this is because it's more aimed at end-users which usually look for exactly that package first. Developers can certainly also browse code online - you just have to go into the "develop" or "code" sections of a project (you can find the code from both).

[gknoy]

It's possible that I'm misunderstanding Sourceforge's goals, but for a site that is ostensibly about hosting software development, having the developer-oriented part of the experience be less convenient than that of an end-user seems backwards. I'm ashamed to say that I've never had anything on either Github or Sourceforge, but Github seems to be very much about sharing the sources, whereas Sourceforge seems to be much more about conveniently distributing the project's binaries.

This is probably largely related to the behavior of their users, though: Github's interface is not a lot more informative than Sourceforge's if no one writes a useful readme, and there have frequently been well-written projects hosted on Sourceforge that have lots of good information on how it works, or how to use it. However, I rarely seem to hear about new projects at Sourceforge, and frequently do see stuff at Github that has well-written introductory documentation accompanying the sources.

I frequently want to read about projects that solve interesting problems, but might not have the interest in installing or using it. Moreover, many people seem to now be using Github as a "Host my interesting document easily" host, which reinforces the "I go to Github to read code / read about code" perception. I'm sure a large part of it is confirmation bias, since most of the interesting code-related things I read about here are hosted at Github. ;)

[coffeeaddicted]

Yes, it is very user orientated. Offering users free software with access to sources for those which are interested. And well, for a lot of software that just makes sense. Maybe not for the kernel or for web-development, but a lot for typical desktop software. SF isn't just about source-hosting, it's about hosting complete projects including distribution of binary packages, allowing that projects use custom homepages (instead of scary source-browsing...) and even support for user (and developer) forums.

I don't think it's that hard to see that this is still preferable for many projects.

[astrodust]

You know what scary source browsing is? SourceForge.

http://gcmakefile.cvs.sourceforge.net/gcmakefile/

Seriously? That's the best they can do?

[coffeeaddicted]

It's definitely worse for reading through complete project code. For reading a single-file it's one click more than github which I can live with. It's very nice for getting a quick view on file-based changes, why and when someone did them and I use that interface a lot for that. I find it way easier figuring out file changes there than in github. SF is generally a lot slower (sometimes so horrible slow that browsing is near impossible). GitHub on the other hand sometimes freezes my browser when it has a lot of syntax highlighting to do (not sure if it still does, been a few months since I last run into that).

They have different ways to present code with different design targets and different problems. I prefer GitHub for reading code online without having to check-out, I prefer SF when already working with a project where I have the code locally and using the online interface to hunt for changes.