SourceForge pulling a CNet download.com boneheaded move?
Have any of you heard about SourceForge's recent takeover/highjacking of GIMP for Windows and Nmap? This was a bit of a shocker to me. It seems to be a way of forcing the inclusion of adware in downloads, for popular projects that don't agree to it. https://plus.google.com/+gimp/posts/cxhB1PScFpe - GIMP http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2015/q2/194 - Nmap The beginning of the end for a former open source champion? So sad when short-term thinking takes over. -- Gilles R. Detillieux E-mail: <grdetil@scrc.umanitoba.ca> Spinal Cord Research Centre WWW: http://www.scrc.umanitoba.ca/ Dept. of Physiology and Pathophysiology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Univ. of Manitoba Winnipeg, MB R3E 0J9 (Canada)
I saw this a couple days ago. Not surprising really, sourceforge has felt a bit scummy for a while now, but I first really ran into it when trying to download filezilla, by default you get the "sourceforge download manager application". It didn't give me any adware/malware, but it's very unnerving when the exe you download isn't the program you wanted. I avoid sourceforge these days, and with the number of ads and false download buttons I won't use it unless I can't get a program anywhere else. -- Wyatt Zacharias On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 10:52 AM, Gilles Detillieux < grdetil@scrc.umanitoba.ca> wrote:
Have any of you heard about SourceForge's recent takeover/highjacking of GIMP for Windows and Nmap? This was a bit of a shocker to me. It seems to be a way of forcing the inclusion of adware in downloads, for popular projects that don't agree to it.
https://plus.google.com/+gimp/posts/cxhB1PScFpe - GIMP http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2015/q2/194 - Nmap
The beginning of the end for a former open source champion? So sad when short-term thinking takes over.
-- Gilles R. Detillieux E-mail: <grdetil@scrc.umanitoba.ca> Spinal Cord Research Centre WWW: http://www.scrc.umanitoba.ca/ Dept. of Physiology and Pathophysiology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Univ. of Manitoba Winnipeg, MB R3E 0J9 (Canada)
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So sad when short-term thinking takes over.
They never had a good long term monetization strategy other than eyeballs. IMHO this isn't short term thinking, it's "let's extract as much revenue as possible by any means necessary or shut this pig down" There's no long game for them anymore. SF were pioneers, but the world changed to more collaborative, distributed development. People want tools that make work a pleasure and increase communication. GitHub and BitBucket provide those, plus have a long term revenue stream with businesses, not individual developers. Companies, including my client, pay several digit sums a year to GitHub because the software is good. I could never see anyone saying the same thing about SourceForge. Sean On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 10:52 AM, Gilles Detillieux < grdetil@scrc.umanitoba.ca> wrote:
Have any of you heard about SourceForge's recent takeover/highjacking of GIMP for Windows and Nmap? This was a bit of a shocker to me. It seems to be a way of forcing the inclusion of adware in downloads, for popular projects that don't agree to it.
https://plus.google.com/+gimp/posts/cxhB1PScFpe - GIMP http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2015/q2/194 - Nmap
The beginning of the end for a former open source champion? So sad when short-term thinking takes over.
-- Gilles R. Detillieux E-mail: <grdetil@scrc.umanitoba.ca> Spinal Cord Research Centre WWW: http://www.scrc.umanitoba.ca/ Dept. of Physiology and Pathophysiology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Univ. of Manitoba Winnipeg, MB R3E 0J9 (Canada)
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-- Sean Walberg <sean@ertw.com> http://ertw.com/
On 2015-06-05 Gilles Detillieux wrote:
Have any of you heard about SourceForge's recent takeover/highjacking of GIMP for Windows and Nmap? This was a bit of a shocker to me. It seems to be a way of forcing the inclusion of adware in downloads, for popular projects that don't agree to it.
If this is the case, what's the method to get SF programs for Windbloze that doesn't install unwantedware? Surely there's a workaround? Ya, like Wyatt said, the worst thing is the fake download buttons that take you to unwantedware sites. Doesn't trick us MUUGers, but 99% of my customers fall for it, and guess who gets to clean it up...
participants (4)
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Gilles Detillieux -
Sean Walberg -
Trevor Cordes -
Wyatt Zacharias