With Google and CodePlex, with the rise of corporate forges and even Github now hosting over 1 million projects, Sourceforge may never achieve the status it enjoyed a decade ago, when it was the center of open source activity.
But this does not mean it’s going to slink away. Far from it.
Sourceforge has been rewritten, from the ground up, with improvements across-the-board from the Wiki to issue tracking, from code management to discussion.
But that’s not all. Sourceforge is making a renewed play for the corporate market, and has its first big win in Adobe, which has moved its open source development to Open@Adobe. (The illustration is from the main page.)
In his blog post announcing the change Dave McAllister of Adobe praised Sourceforge’s continued relevance, and that is indeed something worth celebrating.
I have appeared critical of Sourceforge at times over the years, but the success of open source made rival efforts inevitable. A corporate forge is now a vital corporate asset, which is why so many companies have moved their forges inside.
But it’s also supposed to be a shared connection with a real community, and that’s a message Sourceforge is delivering with the new tools. How many do you think will hear it?
More should.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a journalist, writer and part-time futurist for over 30 years.
