They had a sneaky download button to download some adware vs the download link to the actual software you wanted in the first place. Easy to confuse the two.
That's the "ill-conceived DevShare" mentioned. From the paper:
> While DevShare was an opt-in service, some projects complained that SourceForge bundled third-party adware in their downloads without their consent.25 Ads were added to project download pages with fake download buttons to trick users into clicking on the ad. Often, clicking on these ads resulted in the download of adware.
> Management focused on ROI; SourceForge was expensive to run and did not have a plan to bring in revenue. This led to the introduction of DevShare, but since management did not understand the open source ethos and the development team was not included in management decisions, DevShare was a major failure. It prioritized ROI over trust and bundled adware with project downloads. Many projects started leaving SourceForge, citing DevShare as a main reason.
Yes, I someone who lived through that period I can confirm: I used SourceForge regularly until The point where it was proven to my satisfaction that the malware being added to downloads was not a fluke or a hack, but an intentional choice by management.
Then, I instantly flipped to having a very strong commitment to never again trust SourceForge. You've probably heard about how a reputation is built over years but can be destroyed in an instant... that's exactly what happened here.
Part of the reason is that from the point of view of the person downloading (binary executable) software, the most important feature the site provided was my trust that they would give me the same binary I was asking for. In a similar vein, if I discovered that a bank had been intentionally lying about account balances and adjusting them in the bank's favor to make a profit, I would immediately and permanently sever my relationship with that bank.
That was a bummer. There was that point in time that ending up on SourceForge felt like ending up on one of those shady download pages. GitHub by comparison was a delight.
When they made the download button send you to an interstitial page with ads and a countdown timer before starting the download, that felt eerily like those shady download sites.
"Sneaky" is an understatement; the download link to adware was more prominent than the download link for the product in the headline (which product was also often afflicted with adware).
I found the article rather thin; I was hoping for some explanation of who made those disastrous decisions, and why.
It's easy to criticize them on this issue, but it clearly demonstrates that they were struggling to monetize the site. If people paid for the software they use like they pay for their coffee, companies wouldn't have to resort to things like this.
Can someone validate this source? A Canadian here trying to raise money has been much harder than the USA. I haven't seen deals or valuations anywhere what the graphs imply. Plus it says per project US but lists the amount in Euros....
