> Sourceforge literally bundled malware for a while. So everyone had to move.
This was after SourceForge hugely declined in popularity.
The correct sequence of events is:
1. SourceForge massively declined in popularity,
2. and then in a desperate attempt to extract cash they started bundling malware.
Not the other way around.
All of this had little to no effect on the migration away from SourceForge, which was already well underway in 2013 when the first controversy started. It may have expedited thing somewhat, but not even sure about that. See for example [1] from 2011, which shows GitHub is already beating SourceForge by quite a margin. I found that article because it's used as a citation for "In response to the DevShare adware, many users and projects migrated to GitHub" on Wikipedia, which is simple flat-out wrong – that DevShare incident didn't happen until 2013 (I have removed that from the Wikipedia page now).
It's baffles me how people keep getting the sequence of events wrong on HN.
The reason is simple that SourceForge is just not very good and never was very good. Part of that is because of the ad-driven business model, part of that is that many features were just not done very well. Who actually used the SourceForge issue tracker or VCS browser? Almost no one, because it's crap.
This was after SourceForge hugely declined in popularity.
The correct sequence of events is:
1. SourceForge massively declined in popularity,
2. and then in a desperate attempt to extract cash they started bundling malware.
Not the other way around.
All of this had little to no effect on the migration away from SourceForge, which was already well underway in 2013 when the first controversy started. It may have expedited thing somewhat, but not even sure about that. See for example [1] from 2011, which shows GitHub is already beating SourceForge by quite a margin. I found that article because it's used as a citation for "In response to the DevShare adware, many users and projects migrated to GitHub" on Wikipedia, which is simple flat-out wrong – that DevShare incident didn't happen until 2013 (I have removed that from the Wikipedia page now).
It's baffles me how people keep getting the sequence of events wrong on HN.
The reason is simple that SourceForge is just not very good and never was very good. Part of that is because of the ad-driven business model, part of that is that many features were just not done very well. Who actually used the SourceForge issue tracker or VCS browser? Almost no one, because it's crap.
[1]: https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2011/06/02/blackduck-webinar/