Google Launches Project Hosting - What About the Competition?
(Page 4 of 4 )
Google is not the only company in the open source project hosting space. The aforementioned SourceForge boasts more than 100,000 registered projects and more than a million registered users. And SourceForge is far from alone. There's Tigris and Freshmeat, for example, and IBM and Sun have open source repositories (as do other corporations).
Google insists that it did not create Project Hosting to compete with SourceForge. In fact, Stein cites the company's stance on dual-licensing as one reason that certain open source projects might be better served by other repositories. At least one wag has commented skeptically "The goal is not to compete with SourceForge, but rather to give open source projects an alternative to SourceForge? Yeah, and my goal in writing this is not to be sarcastic, but to show how stupid that statement is with acerbic wit."
There are certainly those who feel that SourceForge needs the competition. Ed Burnette in his blog for ZDNet observed that "Everybody likes to pick on SourceForge. It's slow, CVS is unavailable for days at a time, it took years to add Subversion support, it has an issue tracker not much more advanced than a stone tablet..." He thinks the Project Hosting interface "has several things going for it."
It's hard to tell how Google plans to monetize this latest service, however. At the moment, it isn't ad-supported; that could come later, of course, but one wonders what kinds of ads would fit into a space where developers work on software projects "for fun," in their spare time, and don't charge people for them. Perhaps Google figures that most open source developers (like its own engineers) also have regular full-time programming jobs, and might therefore be a good audience for certain technology-related ads. Time will tell.
What does this mean for those of us who do SEO? If you use open source software at all, or have considered doing so, you'll now be able to find it easier - and heaven knows there are plenty of projects from which to choose. Given that most open source software is actually free to use, this could cut down on your own and your clients' expenses if you're a web designer as well as an SEO.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
