TBF, the way I see it they only did the hosting and making the money; I don't remember them actively supporting open source or the ideals behind it, or being open source developers themselves and contributing, or making their own software open source. Having a revenue model that involves making your users guess which DOWNLOAD button will actually download the application is not the open source spirit.

AFAIK their website was originally open source, with GForge, FusionForge, and GNU's Savannah based on it. Then they had a longer stint staying closed, but they opened back up a couple of years ago, and their current software, Allura, is open source again, though (slightly ironically) now as part of Apache.

The core developers behind it were always Open Source advocates.. but we were always at a war with the corporate overlords.

The code running the site was original open source but they closed it a long time ago. Probably as part of one of the many buy outs over its history. GForge came from it.

The guess the download crap appeared in the past 8-10 years. Before that the site was fairly trustworthy even though there was always ads and the like.

Tragic, but I see no reason to shed any tears. Sites come and go, and when they change hands the new operators are often sleazy. Today we have Github. If they end up doing the same thing, there will be a new VCS site. Nerds won't tolerate crapware.

I remember when they were bought by VA (I think?), the same time as Slashdot changed hands I think.

I remember signing up for an account years ago and having to use Putty and SSH keys to upload data which was revolutionary to FTP-aware me. There was an awful lot of software on there (who remembers visiting freshmeat.net to look for daily updates or search for software too????) but I think it would be sad to not realise how great it was that they offered free hosting and tools. They used to have a compile-farm that you could use to build software on different platforms and architectures but this got retired a long time ago.

For the free tools you got, it wasn't bad! I think "nerds" are quick to forget that. It was FREE

SourceForge wasn't bought by VA, it was started as a skunkworks projects by 4 developers inside of VA. Once the site started to get traction is when the corporate overlords started taking notice and forcing the horrible Ads, and now crapware onto the site.