Having heard from so many of you — developers, end-users, and friends — we’re taking a moment to speak about our values, practices and business model.
What we do:
Since 1999, SourceForge has been synonymous with free code hosting for Open Source projects. We provide developers SCM platforms like Git, Subversion and Mercurial. We also provide download release and distribution facilities, and an array of tools to manage the entire life cycle of Open Source software such as mailing lists, forums and ticket tracker. We have been providing all these services for free using the platform that we also open sourced, which is now part of the Apache Software Foundation under the Apache Allura name.
Where we get content:
The vast majority of our content — code, documentation and discussions — is produced by developers. Other content — tickets, feedback and ratings etc. — is produced by end-users. We supplement this community-generated content by writing editorial reviews, producing videos and marketing projects through social media engagement and our bi-monthly newsletter. We also promote open source projects, for free, featuring Editor and Community Picks on our home page, and all of our pages present a short-list of recommended projects so that we have many ways to help market and promote open source projects, for free, to end-users. SourceForge also provides a directory of enterprise-ready open source projects, where communities and vendors can inform our users about add-ons, events, partners and other resources.
Since SourceForge was founded on the idea that Open Source software should always be available to the community, an idea backed by the Open Source Definition, we continue to uphold that belief by also mirroring important projects on our site.
Advertising on SourceForge:
SourceForge is and has always been a business endeavor. From the early days, one of our primary sources of revenue has been advertising. Advertising includes direct campaigns where we have a high degree of control over ad quality, and indirect campaigns run by Ad Networks where we have a lesser degree of control. When we received complaints about ad quality last year, we established a program to help with the removal of ads that mimic our user interface elements or are otherwise perceived to be malicious. We continue to ask for your patience and assistance, as this is a continuous process.
Bundled offers on SourceForge:
SourceForge recognized that a number of projects wish to monetize their releases to help fund future development. To that end, SourceForge established a program to present easy-to-decline third-party offers for the projects that opted into this program. We also ensured that end-users always have a choice to decline the offers and can uninstall the offers later. In cases where we receive complaints about an offer, we investigate and take appropriate action, including removal of such offer from the program.
What recently changed:
Recently, we converted some unmaintained projects to Mirror status because they were serving older, unmaintained files and lesser value to our users. We remain open to giving the control of such unmaintained projects back to the developers, but ask that they keep such mirrors up-to-date as a matter of industry best-practice and as a service to the end-users.
SourceForge also recently ran a test of presenting easy-to-decline third-party offers with a small number (5) of projects mirrored on our site. This included gimp-win, but did not include nmap. Based on the community feedback, we promptly discontinued this test based on community reaction. We understand this caused tremendous concern among the community members and we acknowledge that it was an oversight on our part.
Feedback:
As a company, we at Sourceforge pride ourselves on being highly responsive to our community members. With that in mind and in an effort to facilitate feedback and ensure our responsiveness to the community, we have established a forum in which we encourage you to share your ideas and suggestions. You are very welcome to join the conversation at the SourceForge Community Voice on SourceForge. Further, you can always reach out to us by using the “Help” link in the header of the SourceForge site, which provides contact information for our Support team and which will ensure any questions or issues you may have are resolved in an efficient manner.