It provides mailing lists, forums and isn't locked to a single type of VCS (in fact it doesn't even need a VCS at all, you can just release files - or you can host the VCS elsewhere and use it only for releases as, e.g., Free Pascal is doing with having the code in GitLab but all releases in SourceForge). Also as a user it has reviews and the project pages are not frontloaded with the source code but instead a summary that tells you what the program is, review/scores about it and even provide options to get notified whenever new versions are released. Hell, it even has screenshots.
Of course it all depends on each project to use them and IMO the SourceForge UX is far from ideal (also the pages load slowly), but at least the functionality is there.
That's really interesting. Thanks for pointing this out.
You (sourceforge) have been getting a lot of, imo, unfair flack in this thread and I just wanted to say thanks. Honestly sourceforge isn't the first place I think of when I need to host code, but I have downloaded a few projects from there in a past weeks and it was much nicer than I remember. Ill make a point to check it out one of these days :)
The new Sourceforge team has generally done a great job. Here is a review that might help some people.
Pros:
For general project discussion, Sourceforge's traditional discussion forum is far superior to Github/GitLab issues (though I haven't tried Github Discussions beta yet). The forum can be configured for users to be able to post without creating an account (though only as a specific user named "Anonymous", not arbitrary names) which is as important feature when creating software for users who aren't likely to have Github or Sourceforge accounts.
Sourceforge download statistics tracking of releases (including graphing per country and with arbitrary timestamps) is far superior to Github, which doesn't offer even private tracking of download numbers without directly using their API. This is actually a really ridiculous situation.
Cons:
Sourceforge recently added the ability for the project administrator to mark any review as spam, which automatically hides it. This single change has completely ruined the trustworthiness of Sourceforge's reviews, as unscrupulous application authors are able to mark all poor reviews as spam so users only see good reviews. Because of this, I recommend AlternativeTo (http://alternativeto.net/), as they have better review non-interference policy.
Sourceforge's entire website seems to go into maintenance mode for a few minutes every 24 hours, which is frustrating for those in less favorable timezones.
Even after using it for a long time, Sourceforge user-interface and settings/permissions is overly complex, confusing and non-intuitive. I find Github's well designed settings page much easier. Though admittedly Github has its share of UI quirks. New Github users are understandably initially confused by the concept of Pull Requests (which should have been called Merge Requests) and the fork user-interface. As a developer familiar with both tools (and git, PRs etc) I find Github easier to use than Sourceforge, which is saying something.
Many Sourceforge projects tend to have their source code mirrored on a rarely updated Github project, which then gets forked and developed without changes being upstreamed, which causes fragmentation.
Many third-party tools (like CircleCI) tend to target only Github (and to a lesser degree GitLab/Bitbucket) and ignore Sourceforge entirely.
It's too easy for newbie users to download older releases (Github has the same issue unless you create a Github Pages site to highlight the most recent release).
Conclusion:
Sourceforge is actually a reasonable tool to develop open-source software in 2021.
For new projects I would generally suggest sticking with Github and GitLab, but for existing projects on Sourceforge changing hosting to Github may not be required.
The real killer is lack of integration of third-party tools like CircleCI. That's enough to switch to Github. But you will likely miss the excellent download statistics, anonymous support forum and user review system.
I'm not sure what the adoption will be like in the long term (the design might be too minimalist/niche for some), but it's nice to see such variety and focus on usability and meaningful minimalism.
It feels like my install of Gitea and Drone CI, but taken a step further on getting things done and not much more. Probably a pretty stark contrast from what my personal GitLab and GitLab CI instance used to run like (the UI there was great IMO, just slow).
It's nice that we have solutions like that, especially those that can be self-hosted, or just hosted versions for people who don't want to admin their own instances. For now, self-hosted Gitea and Drone CI are good enough for me.
Sourceforge has been under new management for approximately 2 years. They revamped the site and cleaned it up. Since this change, I have seen no reason not to use it.
I have been using SourceHut since the alpha went public. I think the hardest thing to adjust to is patchsets being sent over email. But when you think about it that is the way git is supposed to work. It keeps version control decentralized. Drew DeVault has also created a site git-email.io I believe to help new users with the process. He has also either implemented or is implementing a good web interface to sit on top of patchsets.
It is nice knowing that your data is actually protected and private because Drew is very public about his ideals.
One of the cooler features I think is the site runs without JavaScript entirely, unless you need to pay for the first time, which uses Stripe, but even then Drew allows for alternative methods of payments including walking up to him at FOSDEM and giving him a check.
The communication of the service to its users is actually really nice. You get monthly updates regarding development, and quarterly updates which I will are similar to like state of the union addresses, where Drew will talk about the financial situation in detail, including a line item receipt of expenses like new hardware and salaries. Drew used to put his own salary down, but since Simon Ser was hired to work for SourceHut, Drew has chosen to protect Simon's salary and reports salary payouts in totality.
The performance is also a big bonus. Consistently you will find that SourceHut just outperforms GitHub and GitLab on SSH operations. Now this might have a lot to do with the amount of users who use the site, but if you watch the dev mailing list, performance is a top priority. And it is funny watching Drew complain about Python on Mastodon every once in a while.
As far as self-hosting, the documentation seems fairly straightforward. You can pick and choose the services you want, so unlike other options where its all or nothing you can cater to your needs. You can also just move to SourceHut incrementally. Some projects use lists.sr.ht but keep code elsewhere. Some use git.sr.ht, but run CI on Travis. Some use the github.com, but use builds.sr.ht. Any combination is possible.
I definitely recommend using the service. Later this year the service will be in beta, and there are some good features coming right around the corner including names.sr.ht and hub.sr.ht.
Important note that at least during the alpha you can use the entire site for free. Pricing is a pay what you want scale (for sr.ht, there are 3 options), but you get all the features.
It is JRuby-based, and they only give you a compiled binary, and it's weeks to months behind the public GitHub site. Aside from those issues, it's really quite nice.
Features (from the website, to save you clicking through):
1. Language aware code navigation and search.
2. Source and diff comment for code discussion and comprehension.
3. Rules to protect branches, tags, or files.
4. Intelligent commit query and subscription.
5. Advanced pull request for efficient code review.
6. Sophisticated pull request query and subscription.
7. Custom issue states and fields for flexible workflows.
8. Powerful issue query and subscription.
9. Coherent and self-updating issue boards.
10. Cross references amongst code, issues and builds.
Which are cool advanced features and all, but I don't know how they could compete with GitHub and GitLab ... any features that are useful or which put GH/GL at a disadvantage will simply be cloned by the larger orgs' armies of developers. Features aren't defensible.
I guess it's open source, so the developers get to define success simply as "this exists for me to use, because I want those features" or anything else they want. There's no sign of a for-pay version on their website, so I guess it might not a direct commercial competition to GH/GL. Creators: are you around to tell us what you're doing with OneDev?
This comment demonstrates that you do not have any criticism at all regarding this project. While reading it I could only think of Visual Source Safe and Git, which I believe counters your entire premise.
It's more like a Trac distribution / fork with only few patches to the core, but with some additional plugins and a custom theme.
Trac itself is more active (and stable) though and still has one of the best ticket systems, repository browsers and plugin architectures anywhere. It supports Git, wiki and more out of the box. And there are plugins for nearly everything else including neat auto-completion: http://i.imgur.com/Q9aBtJN.gif
Very impressive. This has some features we've been missing in bitbucket/gitlab/github and it looks like the UI is well thought out and still simple.
The IDE-like source parsing is interesting, and I disagree with some of the other commenters here that that should only exist in an IDE, but the java limitation makes that just a novelty for us.
Particularly though the gerrit-style workflow and the rules engine for permissions is enticing. We'd love to move to something like gerrit but don't want to give up the friendliness of bitbucket/github.
I played with it a little bit once for a small personal project. It seems to have all the features you want, but the way you used them never really clicked with me.
Unlike Stash, GitLab, GitHub, Gogs, or others of that nature - though - it expects you to setup your git repositories elsewhere (at least the last time I used it) instead of acting as a receiving host for them (at least the last time I used it - which was a year or two ago at this point).
The UI is much nicer than gerrit (or at least the gerrit UI I knew from 5-6 years ago not sure if they have changed). It’s more “GitHub”-y. It’s a bit confusing at first but once you get into it it’s pretty damn powerful.
Side note, I honestly seriously think we need much better tooling than just these 2 for code reviews.
Happily paying for the alpha, and using to host a personal project. Sourcehut already has more features than I'm taking advantage of. It does very well the thing it needs to do most, which is to be a git remote I can access from anywhere.
Of course it all depends on each project to use them and IMO the SourceForge UX is far from ideal (also the pages load slowly), but at least the functionality is there.
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