Freecode Freezeup 62
LeadSongDog (1120683) writes The venerable Freecode site has today gone static, blaming low traffic. No new content is being accepted, but they continue to serve existing content. They recommend projects consider moving to Sourceforge.
Probably obvious, but Freecode/SourceForge/Slashdot share a corporate parent.
Re: (Score:2)
If it is static, it probably doesn't cost that much for them to run it. Just shove it in a tiny corner of your web space, pay for the domain name every few years. Perhaps someone will buy it from them.
Re: (Score:3)
Dice killed it, just like they killed Sourceforge and are killing Slashdot.
WAS THIS FRESHMEAT? (Score:3)
That used to be REALLY valuable, in the old days - which we then considered new-school. You know! The years of "Cathedral and Bazaar" and "Cluetrain"...
Now? I really won't bother building Windowmaker applets or LibSpinyEchidna.so from source. :-)
Do you want some schadenfreude? Re-read "Cluetrain Manifesto" while thinking of Facebook and AWS.
Re: (Score:2)
Now? I really won't bother building Windowmaker applets or LibSpinyEchidna.so from source. :-)
I would, if only I had the time these days.
In fact I have some teency tiny scripts for making WINGs into a shared library. I half-wrote a calculator application using it about 8 years ago.
Still using WindowMaker, on Slackware64, but I install the binary package, I don't build from source :-)
"Was this Freshmeat?" -- says it all, alas. (Score:2)
Yes, it was Freshmeat. They changed the name about two years ago, though it still resolves to freecode.
I, for one, am very sad. Any time I was feeling like I had a bit too much time on my hands, I'd go to Freshmeat^WFreecode, and check out the newer projects. Almost always, something would catch my eye. And, yes, I still get their daily updates mailed to me, too. I'm wicked bummed. Though I do appear to be one of the relatively few who still use it, so I guess it's no big surprise.
Sad day.
Re: (Score:1)
They kill us because they hate us.
They only invested in our community's sites to kill them and undermine us.
Re: (Score:3)
Sad, though, I remember when I used to hit freshmeat.net as much as slashdot.
I am glad, though, that I got a good chunk of my life back when I learned to just rely on aptitude to keep stuff on my system updated for me.
Still, I ought to go and compile a kernel for the heck of it though, for old time's sake.
Re: (Score:3)
Freshmeat / Freecode wasn't about downloads, it was about release announcements and new project announcements.
I still have a slashbox configured, which I've used a few times in the past several months to learn about new projects that I'd otherwise have never learned about.
Re: (Score:2)
I still have a slashbox configured, which I've used a few times in the past several months to learn about new projects that I'd otherwise have never learned about.
Just out of curiosity, how did you manage to keep that one alive so long?
I too kept re-adding that slashbox and dice kept removing it for the past couple months. /. stories.
I finally decided last week to stop fighting it and just use my bookmark instead of first visiting slashdot and then hitting the freecode slashbox title once I reached the end of the
I really hope Dice wasn't counting freecode visitors based on how many people fought with them over removing that box, and I was the deciding counter :P
For o
Re: (Score:2)
I did have to re-add the slashbox... but as I was too lazy to setup an RSS feed or even manually load the page, the slashbox was my portal to freshmeat.
I used to frequent it much more often back in the day, when I had time to explore and experiment with software. Still, there's always something interesting there to someone.
I even have an old Freshmeat.net black tee shirt from back in the day, with a fun "nutrition facts" label. Can't find even a close pic online.
Here's a random snapshot from circa 2000: htt [tuwien.ac.at]
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Welcome to the 21st Century.... (Score:2, Insightful)
it's called github.com.
Alternative cross-repository listings though? (Score:3)
github.com is great and all, but it doesn't contain all free or open source software that's out there, by a long stretch.
Where is the alternative meta-level listing?
Re: (Score:3)
There is none, they all got bought up and then killed off.
Probably somebody warned them before they bought it that it wouldn't make them money, but they decided to buy it anyways thinking it had other value. Well, it did. But it turns out they didn't share those values.
Re: (Score:3)
I've subscribed to all the ports that interest me or that we're actively using and every time one get's an update, I get an email at the end of the day.
It's really handy.
Does that mean I also don't get email-updates from freshmeat anymore?
Re:Welcome to the 21st Century.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I never thought I'd see an "open source" project hosting site devolve to a state that makes CNet Downloads look good.
Indeed. They even include ads that look like fake "Download" buttons (bigger than the download link), and I've even seen installers embed things like McAfee trials and adware in the installers. It's gotten so bad, my company blocks SourceForge downloads at the proxy.
Re: (Score:2)
BitBucket [bitbucket.org] is still around. Like GitHub, it's actually fairly good, even the free stuff.
Don't know why they're using .org though. Definitely .com material.
freshmeat.net! (Score:1)
they should have never changed the name.
Move to sourceforge? (Score:3)
How will visiting sourceforge help me see summaries of new software releases? Guess I'm confused. I always thought freshmeat.net (renaming and moving it to freecode.com was stupid IMO) was just a listing site, and that's what I've used it for the last 14 years. And it's still been useful at that. Takes money to pay the bills, but it seems to me that this is another example of Dice thinking they can takes something that's popular and monetize it without bothering to find out why it's popular, and what value it gave to the community.
Re:Move to sourceforge? (Score:4, Interesting)
How will visiting sourceforge help me see summaries of new software releases? Guess I'm confused.
Sourceforge is where open source projects go to die. That's the only summary you need.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, parking for abandoned projects, in case in 10 years somebody wants to fork it.
Re: (Score:2)
Takes money to pay the bills
Actually, if you put standard ads in it, then it should only cost $20/m for a small VPS if you have no traffic, and it would make a small amount of money at moderate traffic. You can just hand that over to the volunteer maintainers. Even a site like freshmeat with a high percent of ad-blockers should serve enough ads to pay for traffic.
Re: (Score:2)
Ditto. I visit http://freecode.com/ [freecode.com] daily to see its new/updated stuff. What other opensource software web site that will let us do that?
Logins disabled? Can't export followed projects! (Score:3, Informative)
I regularly visit Freecode to see the new open source projects and discover updates to the projects that I'm already using. I've built up quite a library of projects that I follow on Freecode. Now it seems that they've disabled logins, so there doesn't appear to be a way to at least write down the information on all of the projects that I have followed in the past. Any chance that they'll at least temporarily enable logins again, in order to "export" followed projects, or are we just hosed?
Re: (Score:2)
Come on, this is dice! You're just hosed. You can always email their support, I'm sure they can send you some marketing-speak like they did to me, promising they really care about us while still maintaining the policy of hosing us.
What, you were personally invested in your personal preferences and histories and usage data?! Dice thought you were creating that data just to make them money. They have no moral or ethical concept to indicate that you would actually own the data you created.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't Freecode just a clone of Soureforge? A place to download free crap? What problem did it solve?
No. It was basically just metadata. Hosted files, official project page, bug tracker, version control, etc... that was all off site at any configurable location the project wanted.
"Freecode" was an awful name. Freshmeat.net, while not obvious, didn't make it sound like it hosted code.
AFAIK, there is no replacement for it. Perhaps someone can fork it, but the data is the really valuable part.
Rather than change the name and update the site layout (which, IMO, is now worse than it was), they should have enhanc
Re: (Score:3)
Rather than change the name and update the site layout (which, IMO, is now worse than it was)
Freecode was Alpha...and you guys thought Beta was bad!
Re: (Score:2)
Agree, what would help a lot freshmeat would be a automatic link to sourceforce, github and friends. Developers would upload a new version and (if possible) flag it as a release and freshmeat would publish it automatically. Or allow the "update via new release mailling list". Forcing someone to enter freshmeat to update is a pain and push away many projects or keep the DB from showing obsolete versions.
Also, with this integration, better changelogs could be possible
Finally, keep a list of possible alternati
Re: (Score:2)
It was a meta-listing for projects that were hosted elsewhere. So you could look at a combined listing, and search based on keywords instead of based on hosting provider.
Honestly, hosting provider has nothing to do with what users would be interested in software for. "freecode" (aka freshmeat.net) was the only place with good combined listings. Now, there is no such place.
Should have gone Beta (Score:5, Funny)
They should have tried a new Beta format. Surely that would have saved them.
Re: (Score:2)
Sad. Anything like it? (Score:3)
Are there any comparable websites? (Listing releases of open source projects)
Freshmeat, Freecode, ... (Score:1)
Freshmeat was handy, but not the end-all be-all. Some of the formerly niche projects already emrged under a larger organization, such as GNU, Apache, Mozilla, or Google.
Try http://www.ohloh.net/ [ohloh.net] instead.
Re: (Score:1)
I just checked out Ohloh for the first time. While it does look like it could be very useful, it's not really the same approach as Freecode.
I like that Ohloh actually downloads the source code of the projects that it indexes, and then allows you to search through all that source code on its site. In that respect, it does far more than Freecode ever did. (Although honestly, I'm not sure that I'd ever need to use that feature.)
But the thing that I really enjoyed about Freecode was more of the news aspect o
Static? A news site? WTF? (Score:2)
OK, so Freshmeat... er Freecode was a site with an up-to-the-minute listing of the latest source updates. It's value was in the freshness. And the site is going static.... *boggle*... what part of this am I not getting? A static version of Freecode is a waste of a good IPV4 address.
Re: (Score:2)
what part of this am I not getting?
It's a sign of the times.
Most people just do a "sudo apt-get install" now or click on "Install" in the update manager.
FOSS is mature in that it has a boring, straight-laced, conformist main-stream that caters to 99.9% of the public's needs with unsurprising conventional applications.
We have become institutionalised and the cutting edge has been blunted.
Release the freecode code (Score:3, Interesting)
Sad to see it go, it's been a staple for me, for many years.
I don't see much value in a static version of Freecode - I mean, it has reference value, but why bother? I still see the function itself as a valuable resource; I don't particularly care for sourceforge.net or its layout. How about they open source the Freecode code, so that someone else can consider using it.
Well (Score:2)
So you've managed to kill off Freshmeat (first with a stupidly unnecessary name-change, then allowing crappy "Download Button" ads on a download site, now by removing it's only purpose).
What the hell do you have planned for Slashdot next?
How about, rather than destroying these venerable brands, you actually try and USE THEM rather than let them slide into obscurity?
So now where? (Score:3)
I wrote and maintain an open-source library whose primary purpose is to support the software that I write for my employer. Because of that, I need to keep the primary copy of the library's source code in my employer's SVN server.
However, I also like to keep the library's source available for public use (BSD licensed, with my employer's permission). Traditionally I've been doing that by creating a .zip file containing the source code of each new release, uploading that .zip file to my public web server, and posting a release announcement on Freecode.com.
If Freecode.com can no longer play that announcement/indexing role for future releases, where should I post release notices to instead? It seems like github.com and sourceforge.net assume that all source code will be hosted by their own source-code-management servers, which isn't a good option for me. Just posting them to my own little web page seems insufficient.
Re: (Score:2)
You also can upload release files to SourceForge. I see nothing in their usage terms that requires you to host the code repositories on their servers; it's just the default to do so.
Re: (Score:2)
Why can't you mirror the repository into github, and update it just after every release?
Freecode/Freshmeat replacement? Simple? (Score:2)
We all used it as a way to learn about what had just come out, and discover new useful projects by watching/browsing interesting looking items on the feed. All it really was is an aggregator of update feeds... So lets build a new (RSS) aggregator/planet and reach out to the old Freshmeat projects/users to get them to move over?
If the functionality is pared right down it shouldn't even need logins or any of that stuff. Just make RSS links clearly visible and say to people "hey if you want to follow this proj
Pain in the RSS (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I used to publish releases of my software on freecode.com, so I'm quite angry about this. Actually, every time I've published release on freecode.com, traffic to my project site increased substantially, so I conclude 'lack of traffic' is a bunch of lies spewed by Dice corporate drones and real purpose is just to kill it off and block independent developers.
Freshmeat did one thing and did it well. Now I cannot find alternative sites that would do this in similiar way - so called 'alternatives' are either ad-
Ask Github folks to implement alternative (Score:2)
Any other site that does what Freecode did? (Score:2)
Freecode was useful to simply find out what new/updated software (sometimes not always free, hmmm...) had been recently released regardless of where the code is hosted. Is there any other site that provides such a list in date order? Suggesting Sourceforge as an alternative isn't great (I can't find a list of date-ordered project releases - not individual files, which are in one of their RSS feeds - on the Sourceforge site).
What if I told you... (Score:2)
I have access to a very large internet connection, and an array of servers. I would like to host something like that so it does not just die off. Do we think the community could do that? What would be needed would be some coder(s) to work on the front end and db. Unless of course Dice wants to fork ove the code (unlikely). I could think of a good domain name and just do it. Hell, I have an array of domain names as it is...
Anyone up for it?
A sad day (Score:1)