Sourceforge project hijacks

[romulous]

There has been some user agitation on the SourceForge forums for some of the more well known open source projects currently on SourceForge to take the projects away from there (7-Zip, KeePass, Password Safe for example). In that vein, Notepad++ is now moving away from SourceForge:
http://sourceforge.net/p/notepad-plus/d ... d/9712e658

romulous

[joby_toss]

Any idea why uBlock Origin (using default settings) doesn't play nice with sourceforge? Is sourceforge really that bad?

[guinness]

Yeah, because they decided to hijack certain software by including bundleware, or something along those lines.

[joby_toss]

I know about that, but it still seems to me like a drastic approach. No biggie, though, as it can be easily bypassed. But, still, average Joe could not be so keen in doing that right away.

[guinness]

Well some would argue that re-distributing spyware without the owner's permission plus not to mention misleading, warrants being blocked.

[freakazoid]

Any idea why uBlock Origin (using default settings) doesn't play nice with sourceforge? Is sourceforge really that bad?

I personally uncheck the Badware risks filter in uBlock Origin. Most users from TPFC should do the same as we're smarter than the average bear!

[Midas]

I use uBlock Origin and I did that long ago -- in fact I use only a very minimal subset of the blocking lists available...

[JohnTHaller]

Any idea why uBlock Origin (using default settings) doesn't play nice with sourceforge? Is sourceforge really that bad?

It was due to SourceForge's decision to post bundleware downloaders when users tried to download things like GIMP. There was tremendous community backlash and SourceForge backtracked within a few days. Currently, a bundleware downloader is shipped with 12 projects on SourceForge that have opted into the Dev Share program. All the developers make revenue from this. FileZilla, for instance. Unfortunately, even after SourceForge rescinded the policy/practice, uBlock is still blocking all of SourceForge's 400,000ish projects for personal reasons despite the fact that all kinds of freeware sites littered with bundleware are allowed through.

[webfork]

uBlock is still blocking all of SourceForge's 400,000ish projects for personal reasons

An open source developer reacting to the exploitation of other open source developers?  Maybe it's personal but it's hardly irrational.  That it's still going on may have something to do with the fact that SourceForge and many other assets owned by the parent company are now up for sale:

http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... urceforge/

http://news.softpedia.com/news/sourcefo ... 8019.shtml

It's possible that the new owner may think the bundleware injection was a good idea and go right back to it.

[JohnTHaller]

It's just a bit ironic that one argument for switching from AdBlock Plus was because of arbitrary decisions about what was being filtered... specifically, accepting payment to allow ads through. Now, uBlock, the alternative that most people recommend, is arbitrarily blocking entire sites by default based on personal decisions unrelated to advertising.

[webfork]

It's just a bit ironic that one argument for switching from AdBlock Plus was because of arbitrary decisions about what was being filtered... specifically, accepting payment to allow ads through. Now, uBlock, the alternative that most people recommend, is arbitrarily blocking entire sites by default based on personal decisions unrelated to advertising.

Point taken, but consider that the project genesis and charter may be two different things; if you check out the Readme and Add-on page, they make a point about going beyond adblocking. At the same time, given some of the project history of uBlock Origin, I wouldn't be surprised if this was *all* about getting screwed by ublock.org.

[Specular]

uBlock's Sourceforge blocking is utter BS. There are orders of magnitude more perfectly great projects that all get lumped in to uBlock's badware list merely due a few 'abandoned' projects Sourceforge bundled with some installer, from my understanding.

This harms the image of legitimate Sourceforge projects and doesn't even bother to explain why uBlock decided to block it. There needs to be more transparency.

Had thought Sourceforge reversed this 'hijacking' anyway.

[webfork]

Configfox has an interesting take on SourceForge: he actually prefers the interface (at least on the developer side): http://configfox.sourceforge.net/#whysf

Unfortunately, I think he sort of missed the point behind why everyone doesn't like sourceforge:

ConfigFox is clean, open source, no installation required, no promo/spy/ads/banner bundled.

We of course hope that remains the case.

[webfork]

... thought Sourceforge reversed this 'hijacking' anyway.

At this point yes but, again, that site is up for sale so it remains to be seen how the new administration will handle their revenue stream. It might well include adware.

[webfork]

... it remains to be seen how the new administration will handle their revenue stream. It might well include adware.

I'm a little late to the party in mentioning this, but in news that could affect both our project and PortableApps, Sourceforge was finally acquired. What this means at the moment remains unclear, though they so far seem content to just keep doing what they’ve been doing. *shrug* Hopefully that continues to be the case.