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maxomaiToday, Google Code announced that they were following in GitHub's footsteps and cutting off file downloads for project hosting. We are being asked to Use Google Drive instead.
Frankly, I think this is unfortunate on Google's part. I understand why they did it, and for me, as a developer, the minuses ("why should I have to use my Google Drive space?!?") aren't that obnoxious compared to the benefits I get from Google Code and GitHub. None of my binaries are that huge, and I don't foresee a situation where I have to make available enough old versions of my binaries to fill up more than a few gigabytes of my Drive. Nonetheless, this move is already upsetting quite a few developers, and I can see one good reason why: Google Drive is messy. It requires me to consume, conceptually speaking at least, two different Google services for source and binary. And a Google Drive gets full of miscellaneous crap quickly (or at least it has in my case).
Which is why I found it interesting that SourceForge has reached out to developers:
This is interesting enough that I'm considering deploying my old, broken Minichess program via SourceForge for giggles, just to see how it works. Of course, it's still messy, but this way the source isn't taking up space on "my" Google Drive.
Frankly, I think this is unfortunate on Google's part. I understand why they did it, and for me, as a developer, the minuses ("why should I have to use my Google Drive space?!?") aren't that obnoxious compared to the benefits I get from Google Code and GitHub. None of my binaries are that huge, and I don't foresee a situation where I have to make available enough old versions of my binaries to fill up more than a few gigabytes of my Drive. Nonetheless, this move is already upsetting quite a few developers, and I can see one good reason why: Google Drive is messy. It requires me to consume, conceptually speaking at least, two different Google services for source and binary. And a Google Drive gets full of miscellaneous crap quickly (or at least it has in my case).
Which is why I found it interesting that SourceForge has reached out to developers:
Roberto Galoppini May 23, 2013 at 12:40 PM
SourceForge welcomes Google Code open source developers, to distribute downloads from our open source platform.
We serve over 150 Million+ downloads each month, reaching 42 Million+ unique visitors. We help tiny projects as well as whales like Apache OpenOffice to distribute their downloads via our worldwide mirror network.
By distributing your releases at SourceForge you’ll get a complete download analytics, and the opportunity to tap into a large open source community. We already serve other ecosystems by offering their hosted projects our download facilities, including Githubbers.
As a trusted partner for open source we're glad to help. https://sourceforge.net/publish/?source=googlecode
[Disclosure: I work for SourceForge]
This is interesting enough that I'm considering deploying my old, broken Minichess program via SourceForge for giggles, just to see how it works. Of course, it's still messy, but this way the source isn't taking up space on "my" Google Drive.
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Date: 2013-05-27 01:29 pm (UTC)