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Programming Software Technology

Alternatives to SourceForge for Larger Projects? 79

Posted by Cliff from the too-big-for-the-kahuna dept.
DavonZ asks: "I have recently requested hosting from SourceForge for andLinux, a Windows based Linux distribution. Since andLinux is essentially an operating system, it is quite large (500MB for the first release), and SourceForge rejected the hosting request due to its size. Since andLinux will allow handheld development environments to be 'plugged in', hosting it could require gigs of space. I have looked into alternative distribution methods like ed2k and Bittorrent, but the FUD associated with such distribution methods can slow adaption of the project. I have also considered purchasing hosting, but that is costly, would require donations and the project is not yet presentable for even beta release...at least not yet. What alternatives to SourceForge are available for large projects like this that include the 'bells and whistles' that SourceForge has (CVS, forums, mailing lists, bug tracking, etc.)?"
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Alternatives to SourceForge for Larger Projects? More

Alternatives to SourceForge for Larger Projects?

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  • Sneaker Net (Score:4, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @06:00PM (#14630257) Homepage Journal
    Best and simplest is a good old CD rom :)

    Of course, you could just offer ftp access from your home account to seed the initial project.

    Torrents aren't that bad, and if the project is noteworthy then people will seed for you.

  • A Linux box and a cable modem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by corbettw ( 214229 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @06:03PM (#14630282) Journal
    You're probably going to have to host it yourself, at least until it's far enough long to find someone willing to donate space/bandwidth. You'll have to install some forum software yourself, like phpBB, of course. Isn't the software SF runs itself Open Source? If so, why not download that and put it to work?

    The upshot of hosting it yourself is, you can set up a Google AdSense or Overture account and try to get some revenue coming in to help defray development costs.

    • No, sourceforge is closed source (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02, 2006 @06:05PM (#14630304)
      VA closed the code years ago. [lwn.net] But there is a fork from the original author at gforge. [gforge.org]
      • Heh, now that's ironic (as well as a good example of why to use the GPL instead of "non-viral" licenses)!
        • A different license would not have helped here. When someone owns the copyright to a piece of code the have the ability to relicense that code at any time. That which has been released under a certain license will remain released under that license, but future modifications to that code will not be.
          • What are you saying, that the original author chose to let VA close their version, and kept working on a Free fork too? I haven't actually checked to see what really happened, but that just doesn't make sense.

            Usually in cases like this, what happens is that a 2nd party adds a whole bunch of code to a BSD-style-licensed project, and keeps their changes proprietary. In contrast, this is explicitly disallowed by the GPL, so there's no way VA could have closed the code unless the copyright holder of the origi
            • Except that it doesn't work quite like that for web based software....

            • Re:No, sourceforge is closed source (Score:4, Interesting)

              by Otter ( 3800 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @06:57PM (#14630685) Journal
              What are you saying, that the original author chose to let VA close their version, and kept working on a Free fork too? I haven't actually checked to see what really happened, but that just doesn't make sense.

              The SourceForge code was written by VA, for SourceForge. The GForge guy may be the "original author" in the sense that he literally wrote it, but he isn't the copyright holder.

              For real entertainment, try digging up Eric Raymond's statement about the closing of the SourceForge code, where he furiously spins it as a glorious victory for open-source.

    • Re:A Linux box and a cable modem (Score:5, Informative)

      by martinultima ( 832468 ) <martinultima@gmail.com> on Thursday February 02, 2006 @06:15PM (#14630373) Homepage Journal
      I second the notion to just host it yourself on a Linux box, and use BitTorrent to handle stuff. I was in the exact same situation as you once with my own distro, Ultima – and look where it got me [distrowatch.com]. I've had over 8000 downloads now, all running off 384k uplink, a 700MHz Duron, and endless BitTorrent seeding :-)

      Couple tips if you're going to be creating a Linux distro:

      Tell DistroWatch.com and get yourself famous. That's more or less how I got well-known. I'm not sure if they do the Windows-based distros, but it's worth a shot.

      Know the good BitTorrent sites such as mininova [mininova.org], one of my own favorites, and The Linux Mirror Project [tlm-project.org]. There's a ton of people on those sites who will download stuff just because it's there, and trust me, if you want instant fame that can be a very good thing.

      If you need FTP, may I humbly suggest telling MadTux.org [madtux.org] about your project. I myself heard of them when they e-mailed an offer to host my project for FTP download, and they're very, very friendly people. They do have a fee for downloaders, but to get your distro's ISO's or whatever hosted with them is free. (Tell them that I sent you, they'll know what to do ;-)

      May be a few other things I've forgotten, but those are the big ones. Good luck!

      • something else to try (Score:2, Interesting)

        by thepotoo ( 829391 )
        There are sites out there that can provide you with bandwith. Sort of, that is. What I might do is host the webpage itself on your home computer, then link to one of the following for the actual distro.

        http://www.rapidshare.de/ [rapidshare.de] --> 100mb max size, limited downloads/hour, but it might work if you rar the distro.
         http://www.megaupload.com/ [megaupload.com] --> real slow, 250mb max size
         http://www.filefront.com/ [filefront.com] --> not sure if they allow non-game related stuff, send 'em an email. Their speeds are slow but not

  • Standard Sourceforge Policy (Score:5, Informative)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <akaimbatman@gmaYEATSil.com minus poet> on Thursday February 02, 2006 @06:04PM (#14630284) Homepage Journal
    If you read the rules, you'll find that Sourceforge doesn't allow Linux distributions. (Or operating systems for that matter.) According to their site, the specific issue isn't the size, but rather the amount of redundant data each OS creates. Sourceforge would much rather host the individual projects for the OS and let other sites host the distributions. That way they don't end up carrying three hundred plus copies of GLIBC. (All incompatible with each other.)

    • ...which brings up another good point: (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @06:15PM (#14630375)
      Surely his 500MB of data isn't all unique. Why doesn't he just host the diffs, and provide links to the base software that's hosted elsewhere? Heck, he could even write a script that would automatically retrieve and assemble it!

      Incidentally, I was also going to suggest he put it on Savannah [nongnu.org], until I read this:
      This web site (called Savannah) is a central point for development, distribution and maintenance of Free Software that runs on free operating systems.
      Too bad he decided to help perpetuate non-Free software, eh?
    • It may or may not be a direct solution to the original poster's problem, but rpath linux [rpath.com] is designed to let different distribution forks exist without duplicating the parts which are in common. For example, Foresight Linux [foresightlinux.com] is a distribution which has bleeding edge GNOME, but they can share the non-GNOME parts of the distribution with regular rpath linux. Despite the corporate looking web page, most of this stuff is open source.
    • I think PC-BSD is hosted on sf.net, so why they wouldn't let a GNU/Linux distro in?
      • Sourceforge only contains the scripts to reconfigure BSD. There's no non-unique software packages hosted there. All the downloads for the ISOs and packages occur through other sites. Go check their file downloads [sourceforge.net] if you're still not sure. There's only about 5 megs of data.

  • Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @06:04PM (#14630286) Homepage
    I feel uneasy when projects out there include the word 'Linux' in their names. Linus for that purpose did something like trademark (dont know what exactly) recently to protect the trademark. This is important since someone could come up with a minor BSD-based project and call it GNU\Linux or Linux System or something like that. I hope you've kept that in mind.

    As far as larger projects go, knoppix initially had great demand but the servers slow. Demand itself allowed the torrents to prosper and people could access the earlier knoppix CDs. Their servers seem faster now.

    Host it on any given low bandwidth site, or better yet host all files somewhere online but put the downloadable ISOs on your home machine and elsewhere and allow the torrents to do their work. If theres demand it'll work beautifully. If theres no demand.. well.. you never needed the bandwidth in the first place.

    PS I dont know of OSS hosting solutions other than sf.net.

  • names (Score:2, Funny)

    by Arctic Fox ( 105204 )
    andWhyIsItNamedThat?
    • Just a guess:

      Windows...andLinux. As in both in one OS.

      I'd be interested to see it implemented. From what I read on the wiki, projects like this might help novice Linux users (like me) bridge the gap between Windows and Linux by not forcing them to dual boot or have a second PC.

      Unfortunately, I don't have much advice in the way of hosting without knowing your bandwidth requirements. I could pimp a friend's site hosting company, but I don't know whether that's frowned upon here or how well it'd handle the lar

  • Berlios (Score:5, Informative)

    by Spy der Mann ( 805235 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `todhsals.nnamredyps'> on Thursday February 02, 2006 @06:07PM (#14630320) Homepage Journal
    They got SVN, and compared to sourceforge, they're relatively fast.

  • No need to worry (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stinerman ( 812158 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @06:08PM (#14630324)
    The FUD created about BitTorrent and ed2k is just that. Anyone who even knows about Linux and/or alternative operating systems isn't going to shun your distro because its only available via P2P protocols. BitTorrent was designed with the exact situation you have in mind. Use it for its intended purpose.

    • Anyone who even knows about Linux and/or alternative operating systems isn't going to shun your distro because its only available via P2P protocols.

      Except people who live on campus at a university behind its stateful firewall, where BitTorrent, eDonkey2000, and eMule Kad Network protocols are often blocked or (if you're lucky) throttled to dial-up speeds.

      • ...which is why you get a job in the computer services department. Staff & academic research accounts are treated far differently than the accounts given to students.

  • Go take a look at... (Score:5, Informative)

    by c0l0 ( 826165 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @06:15PM (#14630371) Homepage
    http://www.berlios.de/ [berlios.de]
    • Yeah, I'd say try Berlios – but then again, they declined my project, so I'd say the best way would be to just host it yourself. I'd offer space on my own server, except that it's a bit unreliable and somewhat overloaded at the moment...

  • Gna! (Score:5, Informative)

    by knipknap ( 769880 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @06:26PM (#14630467) Homepage
    I can very much recommend Gna! [gna.org]. They are fast, they are secure, the site is well maintained and the developers are very responsive. You have choice between SVN, CVS and Arch, backups exist, you can host files and a homepage, ...

    I host more 10 projects there since when Gna! first appeared two years ago.
  • The "SourceForge" components are open source (as well as other project-based alternatives such as Drupal+mods, Joomla+mods), and I believe the requirements for these components fall under the usual LAMP stack, which means your only hosting issue would be monthly data transfer rates (everyone and their dog's pet gerbil provide some sort of PHP/MySQL combination that would be adequate for your needs). For under 50 bucks a month, you can get anywhere from 100-300 GB transfer a month -- if you're getting anywhe

  • well (Score:2, Funny)

    by russint ( 793669 )
    You could always beg on slashdot.
  • I was going to suggest berlios.de (see my sig), but then I realized that their official limit is 100 MB. But also when using their service I noted that their staff is very friendly, they provide SVN, and there are not that many projects as on sf.net. Concluding you may try berlios, just write an email in which you exactly explain your purposes, and why your project is so great, then maybe they will give you those 500 MB (and there are few projects hosted which are that big - like an .iso image download). Ma

  • your own hosting? (Score:2, Informative)

    by MikeFM ( 12491 )
    Really you can get your own hosting [1and1.com] with lots of bandwidth pretty cheap. No reason not to have your own server. I have a dedicated server for about $50/month. You can get a hosted account for under $15/month that has all the space and bandwidth you'd probably need.

    • Re:your own hosting? (Score:3, Informative)

      by MikeFM ( 12491 )
      I just went ahead and checked the prices at 1&1 [1and1.com], which I use, you can get a beginner account with PHP, 5GB space, and 250GB monthly transfer for US$3 a month. Pretty affordable and probably enough to get you started or double that for $5 a month or quadruple it for $10 a month. Even an evil code monkey from an alternate dimension should be able to cough that up.

      • Re:your own hosting? (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Dude. If you must post a referral link *twice*, you should at least have the decency to mark it as such. Referral whoring is dishonest.

        • Re:your own hosting? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by MikeFM ( 12491 )
          Why? Slashdot marks what company the link goes to. I've been telling people to go with 1&1 long before they had any sort of affiliate program. I'd be a retard not to use the referral link when telling people to go to it wouldn't I? Okay people - if you want to sign up for 1&1 but don't want to give any credit, which costs you nothing, back to the guy that suggested it then type the URL into your browser bar by hand and ignore anything that comes after the domain name.

          Regardless, they still have the
      • Yes, please go with one of these little companies offering the world in downloads for $1.50. Drive them into the ground when everyone actually starts downloading your program. These companies pray that users don't actually have a successful site that people will visit and cram 1000 of them onto a single box.

        In fact, start your site with a normal host, but offer download mirrors from these crap providers. Keep hammering them with downloads until they start crying! Then remind them how stupid it is to offer "
        • Yes, please go with one of these little companies

          I wouldn't call 1&1 "little". In fact, they're part of Germany's biggest conglomerate of internet firms, aptly named "United Internet [united-internet.com]", which also own outfits like GMX and web.de

        • One reason I use 1&1 is because they are one of the biggest hosting providers in the world and it shows. The speeds obtained when transfering files from my dedicated server are amazing and I'm the kind of person used to sitting on fat pipes at major universities and businesses. My users are amazed at how fast they could download large files from me. Hardly a little company.

  • Host it Yourself (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mysqlrocks ( 783488 )

    It looks like you have two options, get a dedicated server from someone like EV1 Servers [ev1servers.net] for $99/month or setup your own box on your broadband connection (assuming you have broadband). I use EV1 and I would recommend them if you want a dedicated server and are willing to do your own system administration.

    As far as software I'd recommend Subversion [tigris.org] for source countrol, Bugzilla [bugzilla.org] for bug tracking, and MediaWiki [mediawiki.org] for general documentation. I'm in the process of setting this up for my own projects right now.

  • Ketchup based mustard.

    Joke.
  • http://linuxtracker.org/ [linuxtracker.org] will put it on their BT server for you, if a member submits it.

  • Dreamhost (Score:2, Informative)

    by anthropolemic ( 860028 )
    Dreamhost [dreamhost.com] is offering Subversion now on their hosting plans. I haven't tried it out yet but they've been excellent with hosting my Web sites.
  • PlanetMirror [planetmirror.com] is good in Australia and Asia, not sure about the US though.
  • How about https://freepository.com/ [freepository.com]

    They would charge about $10 month if I'm reading the charts right.

  • if your project does not infringe any copyrights and patents, then I can let you host it on my VPS (where I run Wikinerds.org [wikinerds.org]) for a while, until you find a suitable full hosting account. Send me email if I can help you with this.
  • The notion that torrents or magnet uris are somehow declasse is perverse.

  • Or metalab. Or sunsite, if you remember those names and haven't kept up with the changes. (I liked the metalab name best of the three...)

    Anyway, these guys have been around and hosting things like this for at least 10 years. Talk to them [ibiblio.org]. You may need to host bug tracking and forums at a different site, but they can definitely handle a distro-sized download. Ask them about the stuff you want; I think they'll consider making pretty much any open tool available for you.
  • I should mention our project, which is a modern, user friendly SourceForge clone that is fairly easy to install and requires little maintenance. It's open source and based on the open source Sitellite CMS framework and it's called SiteForge.

    Here is its homepage, which is running the SiteForge software: http://www.sitelliteforge.com/siteforge [sitelliteforge.com]
  • Do you need to look for alternate hosting? I am also about to release a morphix based live cd of my project. I plan to use SF to host it. Morphix uses SF for hosting of ISOS. I don't know why you can't. Here is my setup: I use my own host for my project website ( http://www.thewybles.com/~charles/oser [thewybles.com]) and SF for bugs/e-mail/source control etc. I use my own host so I can have raw level access to the server logs which SF doesn't give you. But everything else uses SF. They have taken all the hard work out o

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