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Comment by rip747 | Hacker News Reader

What I don't understand about any of this is why anyone wouldn't just either move their project to Github or self host. Why would you even still have your project hosted on SourceForge?

I understand the author's grief and anger. I feel bad for them really as this will hurt the NMap brand, but come on, avoid the whole situation and just remove the project from SourceForge completely.

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> What I don't understand about any of this is why anyone wouldn't just either move their project to Github or self host. Why would you even still have your project hosted on SourceForge?

They won't let you "move" a project.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/06/source...

> At SourceForge.net, we feel a commitment to ensuring the long-term availability of the Open Source code released by the projects we host. We will weigh requests for project removal against the community value of leaving the project intact...Projects which have moved to another hosting provider are typically retained at SourceForge.net (though you can make a note on the project web site and project summary page directing users to the new home) for sake of retaining materials of historical value.

I think the problem is that abandoning your project on Sourceforge doesn't have the intended effect.

"SourceForge, the code repository site owned by Slashdot Media, has apparently seized control of the account hosting GIMP for Windows on the service, according to e-mails and discussions amongst members of the GIMP community—locking out GIMP's lead Windows developer. And now anyone downloading the Windows version of the open source image editing tool from SourceForge gets the software wrapped in an installer replete with advertisements."

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/source...

>What I don't understand about any of this is why anyone wouldn't just either move their project to Github or self host.

Personally, I like their download stats:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/apng/files/libpng/stats/tim...

But generally, why would I move if I never had problems with the service?

Because perhaps--just fucking perhaps--you don't want malware injected into any of your projects when they're downloaded?

I keep complete control over my projects, and I'll make sure it won't happen.

> I keep complete control over my projects

Until they take that control from you.

> I'll make sure it won't happen

How?

> Until they take that control from you.

They won't because I'm not abandoning my projects.

People who complain have one thing in common - they abandoned their projects on SF. It's kinda like letting the domain name expired and then complaining that somebody took over. Always keep an eye on your hosting and your domain names, folks.

> They won't because I'm not abandoning my projects.

What makes you think that will make a difference? They'll hijack whatever they want that's hosted on their servers whenever they want to hijack it.

Devs who never abandoned their projects are doing fine. Not one of them complained about "hostile takeover".

And what makes you think that this couldn't change at literally any time?

I was wondering the same thing.

Clean up your mess when you're done and you won't have rats.

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