<story><title>How GitHub replaced SourceForge as the dominant code hosting platform</title><url>https://graphite.dev/blog/github-monopoly-on-code-hosting</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Jenk</author><text>After skim reading I couldn&amp;#x27;t see it mentioned, but when SourceForge started bundling malware[0][1] into the software they hosted, it was their death toll.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;neverworkintheory.org&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;decline-of-sourceforge.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;neverworkintheory.org&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;decline-of-sourcefo...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=31110206&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=31110206&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;As my memory recalls it, that triggered an exodus to Google Code, and whilst GH was gaining traction it was somewhat in their shadow. When Google announced they were going to kill Code that was the blessing for GH.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>samtho</author><text>This was so mind-boggling even at the time that SourceForge thought it could leverage its market position to force adware and other nonsense upon its users and get away with it, which itself the last straw in a string of other abuses they subjected users to on the website. It is also so arrogant and presumptive to think that the developers, who&amp;#x27;s projects were hosted here, would put up with their distribution platform bundling junk with their software.&lt;p&gt;This was a mortal sin for them, and rightfully so, whereby it became impossible to recover the damage to their reputation. Like, what were they thinking? Did they know they were doomed and just wanted one final ad sale? It’s just an egregious abuse of whatever dwindling power they had which permanently destroyed what little trust that the developers had for them - the same group of people that provided the only real value (for free, even) that SourceForge held.</text></comment>
<story><title>How GitHub replaced SourceForge as the dominant code hosting platform</title><url>https://graphite.dev/blog/github-monopoly-on-code-hosting</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Jenk</author><text>After skim reading I couldn&amp;#x27;t see it mentioned, but when SourceForge started bundling malware[0][1] into the software they hosted, it was their death toll.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;neverworkintheory.org&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;decline-of-sourceforge.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;neverworkintheory.org&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;decline-of-sourcefo...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=31110206&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=31110206&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;As my memory recalls it, that triggered an exodus to Google Code, and whilst GH was gaining traction it was somewhat in their shadow. When Google announced they were going to kill Code that was the blessing for GH.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dotnet00</author><text>IIRC when Google Code was announced to be closing, the Microsoft equivalent (CodePlex) was the next location a lot of projects moved to. It had a decent UI and supported Mercurial in addition to Git.&lt;p&gt;When MS also announced they were closing that and offering a tool to migrate to GitHub, was when GitHub (and Git) truly became the biggest remaining option.&lt;p&gt;The other aspect of SourceForge&amp;#x27;s decline was that they doubled down on the sketchy site feeling right as acceptance of such sites was on the decline, the likes of mediafire, zippyshare etc were being replaced with cloud storage providers and download aggregators were losing popularity (in part due to also becoming very sketchy and prone to pushing malware). They might&amp;#x27;ve been able to get away with it a few years earlier. I remember that back then it wasn&amp;#x27;t a huge deal to follow a mediafire download link from somewhere that seemed reliable enough, whereas nowadays it&amp;#x27;d be an immediate red flag due to the abundance of more legitimate seeming file sharing options.</text></comment>