SourceForge's website |
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| URL | sourceforge.net or sf.net (redirect) |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Collaborative revision control and software development management system |
| Registration | Optional (required for creating and joining projects) |
| Owner | Geeknet, Inc. |
| Created by | VA Software |
| Launched | November 1999 |
| Alexa rank | 155 (January 2012[update])[1] |
| Current status | Active |
SourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. It was the first to offer that service for free to open source projects[2]. The website runs a version of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, forked from the last open-source version available. As of July 2011[update], the SourceForge repository hosts more than 300,000 projects and has more than 2 million registered users,[3] although not all are active. The domain sourceforge.net attracted at least 33 million visitors by August 2009 according to a Compete.com survey.[4]
SourceForge offers free access to hosting and tools for developers of free / open source software, competing with other providers such as RubyForge, Tigris.org, BountySource, Launchpad, BerliOS, JavaForge, GNU Savannah, Github and Gitorious.
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Project developers have access to centralized storage and tools for managing projects, although it is best known for providing revision control systems such as CVS, SVN, Bazaar, Git or Mercurial.[5] Major features (amongst others) include project wikis, metrics and analysis, access to a MySQL database, and unique sub-domain URLs (such as http://project-name.sourceforge.net).
The vast number of users at SourceForge.net (over 2,000,000 as of 2009[6]) exposes prominent projects to a variety of developers, and can create a positive feedback loop. As a project's activity rises, SourceForge.net's internal ranking system makes it more visible to other developers who may join and contribute to it. Given that many open source projects fail due to lack of developer support, exposure to such a large community of developers can continually breathe new life into a project.
In its terms of use,[7] SourceForge states that its services are not available to users in countries on the sanction list of the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria). Since 2008, access to the secure server (used for making contributions to the site) was blocked for people from those countries. As of January 2010[update], all access including downloads is blocked for those users. This means that all people whose IP addresses appear to belong to those countries are prevented from using the site.[8]
These restrictions have drawn criticism as being counter to the free software movement, the open source software movement and the principles of making software available to all without discrimination.[9]
SourceForge.net was banned in China around 2002,[10] though the ban was later lifted in 2003.
In 2008, SourceForge.net website was banned again in China for about a month (June 26, 2008 – July 24, 2008).[11][12][13] It is probable that the ban was a result of the "Boycott Beijing 2008" banner placed on Notepad++'s SourceForge.net homepage to point out the human rights problem in China.
SourceForge has faced critical attacks on its databases. In 2006, attackers targeted the SourceForge.net database and most of its users were advised to change their passwords in order to remain secure. In December 2007, SourceForge.net was offline for a while due to another attack[14]. Nobody knew exactly what had happened, since there were no reports about the outage.
On January 27, 2011, SourceForge faced another attempt.[15] The attack was mainly against some of the developer infrastructure and resulted in the exploitation of several SourceForge.net servers. SourceForge said, "The attack resulted in an exploit of several SourceForge.net servers, and we have proactively shut down a handful of developer centric services to safeguard data and protect the majority of our services"
According to a SourceForge.net announcement on their blog, as a short term response, they have taken down services such as CVS Hosting, ViewVC (web-based code browsing), New Release upload capability, and Interactive Shell services. The company is silent about the type of attack and from where those attempts were made.
Société civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SCPP) is an umbrella group for a variety of organizations in France. In November, 2008, SCPP initiated a suit against Sourceforge.net, Vuze, Limewire, and Morpheus for hosting P2P file-sharing application Shareaza that "facilitates mass copyright infringement".[16] SourceForge is not sued for hosting copyrighted material itself, but for hosting Vuze.
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