SourceForge.net, the big open source app/code repository has hit a major milestone: 4 billion downloads.
Since 1999, SourceForge has the ‘go to place’ for all open source downloads, but in the last couple of years, Google Code has put up a bit of challenge. Remember also for a while there was this constant thread in media about how SourceForge had 100,000 project, though most had been abandoned. SourceForge.net now has 230,000 projects and if downloads are an indication, they seem to be doing just fine.
According to SourceForge they move approximately 1.8 million downloads a day.
“Our technology enthusiast users are not simply ‘clicking through’;
SourceForge users are deeply engaged and interested in the entire
experience,”Jon Sobel , SourceForge’s group president of Media said in a statement. “Not only are they downloading software, applications and
tools, they are also regularly giving back by adding more content or
providing feedback.”
While SourceForge.net is a significant resource for the open source community, it’s also important to note that SourceForge.net itself uses a whole lot of computing resources too. I spoke with SourceForge earlier this year about their new mirror with CDNetworks. At the time, SourceForge VP Jay Seirmarco told me that traffic can spike on ocassion, with one particular Wednesday in January, the SourceForge mirror
network served 3.9 million downloads totaling 30.1 Terabytes of data.
