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whatnotests

Before GitHub you had Google Code.

Before that was SourceForge.

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Can confirm sourceforge was huge

Another vote for Sourceforge; even today it contains a lot of stuff.

Sourceforge got desperate for money and they started modifying installation packages to contain crapware, an example is FileZilla. I try to stay away from sourceforge since then.

Sourceforge got desperate for money and they started modifying installation packages to contain crapware

That is only a relatively recent development.

And one they have stated here on HN that the new owners are ending. Judging by the comments everytime they are mentioned, they need to do a lot more aggressive PR.

Trust me, we are trying.

They can do whatever they want, many people won't touch them for the rest of their lives, I'm among them.

How is that a productive attitude in life towards anything? The people who did the deed are long gone, but the people who want to restore and advance SourceForge are SOL?

Because there is competition that have never done anything bad like SF, that offers better products. Would you buy your groceries at Al Capone's, while there's a grandpa's groceries just right next door that offers better, cheaper, and more versatile stuff?

SourceForge isn't owned by the same people anymore, so your example is rather bogus.

It's not recent at all, it's just something that happened since GitHub first launched, but they had that issue for years. And the recent development is having new owners who stopped that bullshit.

relatively recent - they have been around since 1999, and the scamware stuff didn't start until 2013.

SourceForge now scans all projects for malware and displays warnings on downloads (sourceforge.net)

3 points by loganabbott 367 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=loganabbott

I think mdekkers meant it was a recent development in the history of SourceForge and was not true for most of its existence. It has been rectified.

SF has new owners, all the crapware and other worst practices have been gone for months.

And to help you find the projects, and their new releases, back in the day, there were directories such as http://freshmeat.net/

(Something I think of re-creating now and again, but maybe with distributions containing packages people don't need such a thing any more?)

Freshcode still exists as a reincarnation at http://freshcode.club/

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