Hi,

On 29.08.2013 15:53, day five wrote:

Agree but what alternative do you suggest ?

I just wanted to make the list aware of the problem.

Perhaps sooner or later monetization is inevitable for all open source proyects. What hope is there for "free" software when global currency models are rapidly deteriorating. There are always those who would wish to capitalize on another's work much like an parasite.

It is one thing to sell free software or make money for distributing it you did not code yourself, this is absolutely fine behaviour, e.g. commercial Linux distributions. But using spyware or adware is not an acceptable behaviour, although it is still compatible with Pd's license.

Do you think that bitbucket or github are any better ? Who is to say that some minutes down the road they will not do the same.

I cannot vouch, that any commercial service will not do the same of course. Github e.g. stopped supporting downloads of binaries a few months ago.

It would not be much work to setup mirrors for hosting the code, and in any event migrate to yet another service, but there are other things to consider: There is the bug tracker that is hosted by Sourceforge, then binaries, people and their accounts and access rights, etc.

As I have said before, I just wanted to spark a discussion, I do not suggest a fix right now.

Best regards, Thomas

On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 12:38 PM, Thomas Mayer <thomas@residuum.org mailto:thomas@residuum.org> wrote:

Hello,

Sourceforge's new owner tries to persuade top projects to use a closed
source installer that includes spyware / adware:

http://www.gluster.org/2013/08/how-far-the-once-mighty-sourceforge-has-fallen/

IMHO this in not a good place to host a true free software project any
more. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks,
Thomas
--
"In an era when everything can be surveiled, all we have left is
politeness."
(Major Napier in: Neal Stephenson: The Diamond Age)
http://www.residuum.org/

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On 31/08/13 06:46, Thomas Mayer wrote:

I cannot vouch, that any commercial service will not do the same of course. Github e.g. stopped supporting downloads of binaries a few months ago.

ISPs charge for bandwidth, in some places much more heavily than others, so for hosting lots of binaries without this kind of revenue raising you need to go through some big institution with serious bandwidth ... say a university, or the mirrors provided within various ISPs or academic networks, and accept their conditions to do so.

Otherwise you can choose to only supply binaries to those people willing (and able) to join peer to peer file sharing networks, or willing and able to get their binaries through the big mirror system organised by Debian or similar.

Essentially either abandon potential or existing users who only use commercial channels (maybe a few will actually learn, expand their horizons, and follow the move) or join their club, make use of their channels, and live with their techniques. It's a difficult choice, it depends on your goals.

Github is offering binary downloads again, but I'd guess that can only continue if the volume stays reasonably small (i.e. if most users are there for the code, as developers ... and they distribute their binaries using other channels) or the revenue they can extract from the user in the process gets higher, or they can pass the bandwidth cost on to the projects as a paid service.

Simon