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July 27, 2006

Google challenges SourceForge in open source project hosting

Marshall Kirkpatrick

55 comments »

Google announced today at OSCON, the O’Reilly open source conference, that it has launched an open source project hosting site that will rival SourceForge.net. The service has been given the unglamorous name Google Code Project Hosting.

Early comments around the web highlight the need for a competitor to SourceForge.net, which is believed to experience too much down time and emphasize enterprise users at the expense of others. SourceForge.net runs on the propriety SourceForge software and is owned by Fremont California’s VA Software.

Projects hosted by Google are organized by tag and includes an ajax feedback and issue tracking. They system is built on Subversion and Google’s Big Table file system. Projects can be up to 100mb in size. The reliability of Google’s uptime seems to be a primary selling point.

The interface is pared down and doesn’t include much of the information that you find when you look at a project on SourceForge. There’s an ajax issue tracking feature for user feedback. So far the whole thing looks far less user-friendly than SourceForge but if it’s targeting a technical audience exclusively that might be of less consequence.

Projects already available on the site include things like Webomedia, an ajax based framework that will help create online streaming of media, Simple File Manager, an easy to use web based alternative to FTP, and RepoMan, an encrypted Python P2P chat service. Humorously, the sample tag “stable” currently brings up no results.

Update: Several people have pointed to Jeff Lindsay’s DevjaVu as an alternative. It’s in private beta right now, but it’s a startup and we love startups.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 27th, 2006 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Spencer

    July 27th, 2006 at 3:30 pm

    There’s a typo, SourcForge instead of SourceForge. 2nd paragraph from bottom.

  2. Marshall Kirkpatrick

    July 27th, 2006 at 3:35 pm

    Thx

  3. Ethiopic

    July 27th, 2006 at 3:35 pm

    What’s with google and these flat out bland, borring UIs? It not bad in Gmail and I like the simple Google homepage, but it doesn’t work for everything.

    Also, looks like they marketing this to coders, rather than the general public. They are who download the most.

    Just seems to me that googlel is paying less and less attention to User Interface (UI) nowadays.

    What do you guys think?…

  4. timheuer

    July 27th, 2006 at 3:38 pm

    “The reliability of Google’s uptime seems to be a primary selling point.” — really? because in the 10 minutes that they announced it at OSCON with only about 200 people aware, the stability and uptime was a bunch of errors — and that was minimal people knowing about it.

  5. Simon Willison

    July 27th, 2006 at 4:16 pm

    I for one am finding Google Project Hosting hugely easier to use that Sourceforge. It has a nicely cut-down feature set and a very clear interface.

  6. Raghu

    July 27th, 2006 at 4:23 pm

    Not to be picky but there’s another type: it is Fremont, CA not Freemont, CA

  7. Raghu

    July 27th, 2006 at 4:23 pm

    Not to be picky, but there’s another typo: it is Fremont, CA not Freemont, CA

  8. Marshall Kirkpatrick

    July 27th, 2006 at 4:44 pm

    Rahgu, thank you for the correction.

    Rahgu, thank you for the correction.

  9. Brian

    July 27th, 2006 at 4:51 pm

    An easy to use web “baed” file manager?

  10. Brian

    July 27th, 2006 at 4:53 pm

    Sorry made a typo there myself, “alternative to FTP” not “file-manager”.

    That previous comment was written from memory ^_^.

  11. SorenG

    July 27th, 2006 at 4:56 pm

    Then there is SourceFourge.net and SourceForge.net in the second paragraph.

  12. Marshall Kirkpatrick

    July 27th, 2006 at 5:16 pm

    Whooey! Time to get some sleep or dink more coffee.

  13. Peter

    July 27th, 2006 at 5:25 pm

    I for one like the simple interface. As mentioned before, it’s coders/developers who will be using this the most, and I’m guessing they want something that’s simple, straightforward and easy to use, not something with a flashy UI.

    Sometimes simple is beautiful. Google was among the first of the big search engines to make their page simple, stripped-down and to the point, and I applaud them for remaining this way through the years.

  14. matthew

    July 27th, 2006 at 5:28 pm

    it’s “drink” not “dink” Marshall

    lol

  15. Marshall Kirkpatrick

    July 27th, 2006 at 5:33 pm

    hey you take your coffee your way, I’ll take it mine.

  16. tom

    July 27th, 2006 at 5:35 pm

    Bye bye SourceForge, fun knowin ya!

  17. 423424

    July 27th, 2006 at 5:40 pm

    234234

  18. Nick Gavronsky

    July 27th, 2006 at 5:50 pm

    I think it’s time google started using their brand power and creating better designs and coming up with better names for their products. This should be interesting to see how it will compete with sourceforge.

  19. engtech

    July 27th, 2006 at 6:15 pm

    I ran around the site for an hour and I put a list of all the features at:

    http://engtech.wordpress.com/2.....urceforge/

  20. Marshall Kirkpatrick

    July 27th, 2006 at 6:19 pm

    Engtech, that’s a great post. Thanks for the link.

  21. Tom

    July 27th, 2006 at 7:23 pm

    I like the fact that Marshall wrote this article, it seems that Micheal is a little bit bitter towards Google at times.

  22. thinkdigit

    July 27th, 2006 at 7:53 pm

    starting late sometime helps.
    a lot easiet to navigate.

  23. engtech

    July 27th, 2006 at 8:21 pm

    Engtech, that’s a great post. Thanks for the link.

    welcome, feel free to include it in the original article. :)

  24. Jeff Lindsay

    July 27th, 2006 at 10:12 pm

    -cough- http://devjavu.com -cough-

  25. Baher

    July 27th, 2006 at 10:19 pm

    I really like the simplicity of this service, and the powerful search.
    SourceForegt better start improving their service, if they’re hoping to keep their users.

  26. Geoffrey McCaleb

    July 27th, 2006 at 10:21 pm

    Funny, “user friendly” and “SourceForge” are words I wouldn’t think would go together. :)

  27. Walter Rafelsberger

    July 27th, 2006 at 11:55 pm

    I wonder why sourceforge is the only alternative mentioned in this context. Sure it’s big, but there are others of course. I prefer berlios.de.
    http://developer.berlios.de/

  28. Marshall Kirkpatrick

    July 27th, 2006 at 11:58 pm

    Word, Europe!

  29. JonGretar

    July 28th, 2006 at 12:00 am

    I find this to be much simpler than all the **forges out there. They all try to provide various functionalities but for all of the features there are simpler and better solitions out there.

    However one interesting feature. Google Code warned me when I was creating a project that there was already a project called “tubmler”…… on SourceForge.net!!! It seems that google checks if the name exists on other code hosting sites and warns that this might make confusion. A great little feature.

  30. bustaa

    July 28th, 2006 at 12:15 am

    finally … sourceforge _SUCKS_ ….

    It’s bloated,slow,ugly and the downtime is not acceptable.

  31. Steven

    July 28th, 2006 at 1:59 am

    wish we can have more choice about open source project hosting and wish sourceforge offer better service.

  32. scott johnson

    July 28th, 2006 at 8:19 am

    who doesn’t google just buy sourceforge????

  33. scott johnson

    July 28th, 2006 at 8:21 am

    sorry….why doesn’t google just buy sourceforge????

  34. Dan

    July 31st, 2006 at 10:58 am

    This looks to be more of a compliment to SourceForge than competition — for now. We host our enterprise scale project on SF.net and overall its a great service, considering its free. Definitely have complaints when the site has its downtimes and the forums leave a lot to be desired (we host our own at the company site, jitterbit.com).

    Still, Google looks like it will help smaller more individual projects benefit, and SF will hopefully feel some heat about the potential competition down the line and improve some of their services.

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