Re: SourceForge new emphasis

From: Jack Park (jackpark@verticalnet.com)
Date: Thu Feb 22 2001 - 07:02:05 PST


Many moons back, I recall reading that SourceForge was offering hot projects
$1000 per month to bring those projects into the SF sandbox. I wonder if
that's still happening. With 16,000 projects, it's hard to imagine that
this could still be the case. OTOH, look at the stats at any randomly
selected project and you see that some, maybe many of those projects don't
really generate all that much activity.

It is clear to me that SourceForge, what with all the downtime that I have
personally experienced when trying to access them, could use some
improvements. Their post today clearly suggests that they understand this
need and are doing something about it. I, for one, am somewhat loath to
take my projects there simply because of the enormous size and chaotic
nature of that arena. Were they to organize that site along the lines of an
OHS, I'd love to take my projects there.

Jack

----- Original Message -----
From: Grant Bowman <grantbow@svpal.org>
To: <ohs-dev@bootstrap.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 1:55 AM
Subject: SourceForge new emphasis

> I got this and was wondering if there's a way to look for sponsorship
> with them now to help the OHS development. There's a Pat but I don't
> know what her role is at VA. The SourceForge onsite development tools
> generate revenue for VA, so it would help them in further developing
> and enhancing the technology they deploy to their customers and the
> community at large.
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> -- Grant Bowman <grantbow@svpal.org>
>
>
>
> ----- Forwarded message from nobody <nobody@sourceforge.net> -----
> From: nobody <nobody@sourceforge.net>
> To: noreply@sourceforge.net
> Subject: SourceForge:
> Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 01:39:52 -0800
> Message-Id: <E14VsE4-00021C-00@usw-sf-web3.sourceforge.net>
>
> SourceForge update: February 21st, 2001.
>
> -------------
> VA LINUX'S COMMITMENT TO SOURCEFORGE
> SUPPORT
> TRACKER TOOL
> COMPAQ ALPHASERVER PLATFORM IN COMPILE FARM.
> LINUX DRIVER DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
> -------------
>
> Current Statistics:
> 16,000 Projects,
> 125,000 Developers
>
>
> VA LINUX'S COMMITMENT TO SOURCEFORGE
> ---
> As many of you may know, VA Linux Systems, which owns and manages
SourceForge, released it's 2nd quarter results for fiscal 2001 and also
announced a staff reduction of 25% company wide.
>
> How does this affect SourceForge? What is VA's commitment to SourceForge?
How is SourceForge making money?
>
> Any company wide reorganization is a difficult process for all who are
involved. As painful as the process is, this reorganization is actually
good for SourceForge and good for you.
>
> VA Linux is refocusing itself into a number of key areas and one of them
is SourceForge. This additional focus gives SourceForge additional funding,
more engineers, more hardware, and more support staff to accommodate our
growth and serve the community better. You'll be seeing a lot of positive
things in the coming months with these additional resources. (BTW: No one
on the team was let go during the layoffs)
>
> VA's commitment to SourceForge has never been stronger. The company
recently invested $500,000 in new hardware and we'll continue to add ftp
servers, bandwidth, personnel and other resources necessary to make the site
a continued success.
>
> A number of you have asked about SourceForge's business model, and how VA
can continue to keep SourceForge running for 'free'. VA has a strong
commitment to the Open Source Community. It is also generating revenue from
SourceForge and will continue to do so to help support the site and generate
revenue for the company. SourceForge is currently generating revenue in
three ways.
>
> A) Banner ads on the site. (Page views grew 20% in January alone)
>
> B) Corporate Sponsorships. This includes hardware in the compile farm and
foundry corporate sponsorships.
>
> C) SourceForge Onsite: This is a service in which we deploy SourceForge's
technology behind a company's firewall so that the company can work
collaboratively to write better software faster internally.
> http://www.valinux.com/services/sfos.html
> http://www.valinux.com/about/news/releases/020901.html
>
>
> If you have any specific questions about any information above, please
feel free to write me at pat@sourceforge.net
>
>
> SUPPORT
> ---
> Good news in the support area. For those of you who have put in support
requests during the past 60 days, you know there have been delays. I want to
apologize for that. This has been partially due to the hardware upgrade in
late December, incredible growth in January and some staffing changes which
created a bit of a backlog.
>
> To combat the problem, we've added additional support staff to cut through
the buildup.
>
> We have also recently hired Jacob Moorman, who started two weeks ago in
the role of "Quality of Service Manager". Jacob's position is to make
support on SourceForge world class, improve the documentation on the site
and work to create tools to make the site easier to administer (such as
releasing locked CVS files).
>
> Jacob is also maintaining the new 'Site Status' page on the site. The
'Site status' page (the link is located on the left nav bar) is updated
daily and lists all the services available on SourceForge.
>
> Jacob's email address is moorman@sourceforge.net. Feel free to email him
with suggestions comments and general feedback.
>
>
>
> ** New Tool** Tracker
> ---
> 'Bigdisk' has been putting the finishing touches on a new tool called
Tracker.
>
> The new tracker tool combines the functionality of the old bug tracker,
support manager, and patch manager into one tool, along with a bunch of new
features and the ability to create unlimited numbers of additional trackers,
like feature request managers or whatever else you can come up with.
>
> This powerful new tool will be online within the next 10 days.
>
>
>
> COMPAQ ALPHASERVER PLATFORM IN COMPILE FARM.
> ---
> We recently added Compaq Alphas to the SourceForge compile Farm. This
includes both True 64 on Alpha and Linux on Alpha. We'll be adding
additional platforms in the coming weeks including Sun Sparc (Solaris and
Linux)and IBM PPC (AIX and Linux).
> http://sourceforge.net/compilefarm/
>
>
>
>
> LINUX DRIVER DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
> ---
> Over the past few weeks, we've been working with a few hardware companies
interested in opening up their specs on SourceForge and supporting the Open
Source community's Linux driver development efforts.
>
> Being able to put specs in front of an audience the size of SourceForge is
of tremendous value to companies looking to make their hardware work (or
work better) under Linux. When we talk to these companies, we point to
> scores of successful driver projects on the site (from PCMCIA, to
printers, to storage -- 2 of the 10 most active projects are
driver-related).
>
> This is a great experiment, and could be a great win for Open Source. To
move things along, we're going to create a foundry and set up resources to
help developers working on Linux driver development.
>
> If this is an itch you'd like to help scratch, subscribe to the Linux
driver development mailing list at:
<linuxdrivers-foundry@lists.sourceforge.net> The more developers that
subscribe and get involved, the easier it will be for us to get more vendors
to open their specs (and the sooner you'll know about it when they do).
[We're especially interested in getting in touch with developers who are
willing to help admin the foundry and recruit vendor participants.]
>
> ---------------------
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> Direct any questions to admin@sourceforge.net, or reply to this email.
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
> --
> -- Grant Bowman <grantbow@svpal.org>

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