[FSF India] Why you should not use sourceforge for your code hosting and development.

[Ramakrishnan M]

Hello!

By now, all of you in the Free Software Community would have come to know that
the VA Research supported site http://sourceforge.net/ is going commercial. 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/21253.html
http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=6267&group_id=1

i.e The code of sourceforge is going to be closed. 
Here is the relevant text 
"By selling proprietary software together with Open Source software, VA is
making it easier for its enterprise customers to purchase and deploy
SourceForge software. VA Linux will be distributing SourceForge Enterprise
Edition to its corporate customers under a combination of the Mozilla Public
License (version 1.1) and a proprietary software license.  "

This is not unexpected of a company owned by VA Linux. VA's cheif Larry
Augustin, is one among the advocates of the Open Source Movement (which by the
way has nothing to do with Free Software Movement). 

They also add that they will be coming out with the GPLed version of
sourceforge code(which is already there, and is used by
http://savannah.gnu.org/). But needless to say, they must be feeling that they
did a bad thing when they released the code under GPL, way back when they
started sourceforge.

What if, tomorrow, VA says, all the code hosted on sourceforge with licences
other than GPL (or less "restrictive" than GPL) are going to be owned by them?
or what if they say that the operational cost is high and shut down the site?
These are very much possible. They all jumped into this business, not to
promote it or not to be part of the community, but for the simple reason that
there is money there. And now, Eric Raymond who, some people regard as Richard
Stallman of Open Source Movement, has posted the following mail asking people
to calm down... 

http://lwn.net/daily/esr-on-va.php3

That's stupid, and is unexpected from a person like ESR. Of course I respect
him as a hacker. But I think I know why he came out with this letter: He holds
huge stake in VA. It's just that simple. I am not a businessman and I don't
(and can't think like a businessman and so) I don't understand most of the
stuff that he has written in that letter. I am concerned only about one thing.
Will the end users of the software be benifited? In this case, it is the
developers, who are going to use the sourceforge software. It's clear that
given the motives of VA, we should expect more bad news from them.

So the conclusion IMNSHO(In My Not So Humble Opinion): Boycott sourceforge, Use
savannah instead! Protect your rights and freedom.

Let the flamefest begin!

Best Regards
-- 
Ramakrishnan M                              <gnuhead@myrealbox.com>
World Wide Web:                  http://www.symonds.net/~rkrishnan/