GIMP left SourceForge a few months after VLC did in 2013, telling SourceForge point-blank that they weren’t interested in participating in DevShare and other schemes. User who went to SourceForge to download the Windows version of the GIMP might click a “sponsored” ad that led them to another website where the GIMP was bundled along with junkware. “We still don’t know who was behind this attack and their motivations but the coincidence is striking, I let you draw your own conclusions,” he wrote. A VLC developer notes that VLC was subject to a large DDoS attack on their download servers around this time. SourceForge later came back to VLC and asked them if they wanted to participate in “DevShare” to gain money from bundling obnoxious junkware with VLC - and VLC said no. SourceForge wouldn’t remove the ads, so VLC left and began hosting their own downloads.Ī video showing the multiple ads SourceForge bundled with GIMP’s installer.
But SourceForge hosted misleading ads that encouraged users to download VLC and other applications from other websites where they were bundled with junkware. VLC was the biggest, most-downloaded application on SourceForge in 2012. If you’re wondering why there hasn’t been more of an exodus of big projects, it’s because many open-source projects really started moving away from SourceForge back in 2013. Other smaller projects have also moved away from SourceForge recently. Want to stay up to date on Linux, BSD, Chrome OS, and the rest of the World Beyond Windows? Bookmark the World Beyond Windows column page or follow our RSS feed.īundling junkware along with open-source projects against their developers’ wishes is the last straw when those developers are struggling to provide free, safe-to-use software without the junk.
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