From the ‘Does Sourceforge Matter Anymore?’ files:
There was a time when I would go to Sourceforge first to find any open source project. That hasn’t been the case in years for me, as first Google Code and more recently GitHub have become the primary places for me (and many others) to find and host open source projects.
That’s why I was a little surprised to see that Apache OpenOffice is going to Sourceforge.
OpenOffice (OOo) is Oracle’s castoff project, backed strongly by IBM. The bulk of community and ALL major Linux distros have moved on to LibreOffice.
To be accurate Sourceforge is hosting the serving downloads for the Extensions and the Templates sites, as well as the upcoming Apache OpenOffice 3.4 Release. This is a change from the Sun/Oracle based hosting, so it’s good to see another part of the open source community stepping up to keep this effort around.
Even though I personally no longer use OOo, choice is always a good thing. It’s also good to see Sourceforge trying to re-assert its relevance in the age of Github’s popularity. The forge/dev space is one thing, but Sourceforge was originally a great repository for open source software and perhaps it will be that again.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.