20 Facts About SourceForge

SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software.

SourceForge was one of the first to offer this service free of charge to open-source projects.

SourceForge offers free hosting and free access to tools for developers of free and open-source software.

In 2009 SourceForge reported a gross quarterly income of US$23 million through media and e-commerce streams.

On February 9,2016, SourceForge announced they had eliminated their DevShare program practice of bundling installers with project downloads.

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SourceForge, founded in 1999 by VA Software, was the first provider of a centralized location for free and open-source software developers to control and manage software development and offering this service without charge.

The software running the SourceForge site was released as free software in January 2000 and was later named SourceForge Alexandria.

The last release under a free license was made in November 2001; after the dot-com bubble, SourceForge was later powered by the proprietary SourceForge Enterprise Edition, a separate product re-written in Java which was marketed for offshore outsourcing.

SourceForge has been temporarily banned in China three times: in September 2002, in July 2008 and on August 6,2012.

In November 2008, SourceForge was sued by the French collection society Societe civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France for hosting downloads of the file sharing application Shareaza.

In 2009 SourceForge announced a new site platform known as Allura, which would be an extensible, open source platform licensed under the Apache License, utilizing components such as Python and MongoDB, and offering REST APIs.

In July 2013 SourceForge announced that it would provide project owners with an optional feature called DevShare, which places closed-source ad-supported content into the binary installers and gives the project part of the ad revenue.

In November 2013 GIMP, a free image manipulation program, removed its download from SourceForge, citing misleading download buttons that potentially confuse customers, as well as SourceForge's own Windows installer, which bundles potentially unwanted programs.

In May 2015, SourceForge took control of pages for five projects that had migrated to other hosting sites and replaced the project downloads with adware-laden downloads.

Community concerns triggered a prompt review of SourceForge mirroring program, and third-party bundling of mirrored content was discontinued on May 27,2015.

On May 17,2016, SourceForge announced that they were now scanning all projects for malware, and displaying warnings on projects detected to have malware.

On June 1,2015, SourceForge claimed that they had stopped coupling "third party offers" with unmaintained SourceForge projects.

Since this announcement was made, a number of other developers have reported that their SourceForge projects had been taken over by SourceForge staff accounts, including nmap, and VLC media player.

On June 18,2015, SourceForge announced that SourceForge-maintained mirrored projects were removed, and anticipated the formation of a Community Panel to review their mirroring practices.

Since 2002, SourceForge has featured a pair of Projects of the Month, one chosen by its community and the other by its staff, but these have not been updated since December 2020.