SourceForge's old strategy of having ads on-site shown on project pages and as an interstitial when you download a file in a browser (but not via wget, NSIS, etc) was unsustainable. With ad revenue declining across the web, freeware/open source developers and hosters will need to find other avenues to support things. SourceForge was in a very precarious position financially a few years ago as ad revenue fell and there was whisperings of them shutting down entirely.
Offer-based installers are one way of monetizing and have become exceedingly popular, especially with closed-source freeware. Unfortunately, most of these installers are designed to trick users into installing (or go so far as to install without use consent). To SourceForge's credit, they make a single offer which is clearly defined and even have a link to a page explaining why the offer is made. Compare this to your typical download from Download.com which includes multiple offers including several tricks to get you to install (pages that seem to be license agreements for the main software but install adware when you click agree, pages that list a standard and a custom install type and you'll get adware unless you pick custom and uncheck the offer, etc).
The other option is freemium pricing, free for smaller users but bigger users pay. To go this route, you basically need to go after the enterprise to make money. Github has taken this route from the beginning and achieved profitability in 2009 if I recall. I'm not sure if Github is still profitable, but they got $100m in funding last year, so they have money to burn. That could be why the added binary hosting back in. They had it originally but removed it due to costs years ago. Still, I'm unsure if they would put up with a project as large as the ones on SourceForge (PortableApps.com, FileZilla, GIMP for Windows, etc) as that is quite a bit of bandwidth to give away for free as a loss leader (since Github wouldn't even make money on ads for those downloads). Unfortunately, SourceForge has no enterprise offerings at present, so this isn't a viable revenue source today. They could explore this route in the future as a competitor to Github, though. It would be a bit of a pivot for them and not without its own risks. But, even if they go down this route, they still need to have the revenue today to keep going. So, it's a bit of a catch 22.
Thanks for your reply. First off, you're right, cheers for resuscitating SF.
Not that it would by any means be easy, I was suggesting a conceptual re-think of SF to attract and enthrall new users/projects. However your response (and the refrain I hear from others) indicates a strategy of monetizing the big binary projects you already have. That's cool, and that's a market. But I would fear
- those projects being coaxed away by innovations from services in adjacent markets (GitHub using enterprise revenue to cover download costs), and
- those big binary projects eventually dying (as projects sometimes do), without replacement from new young projects (because they will prefer to start on GitHub and will then mature there).
Perhaps go after the conceptual strategy of "SF is where you go when you've grow out of GitHub".
First off, SourceForge isn't me :) I just run one of the largest projects hosted on SourceForge.
Second, Github doesn't really offer what the big binaries on SourceForge need which is tons of bandwidth to host downloads. Github ditched downloads back in December but appears to have added them back in with 'Releases' last month. It remains to be seen how much bandwidth a free and open source project can actually push through Github, though. And whether Github will keep Releases/downloads around at all since they've only been around for a month and were unceremoniously killed off just 8 months prior.
SourceForge is a known quantity with download mirrors all over the world that you can push 10s of TBs per month through for free as long as you're a fully open source project. Github, on the other hand, is an unknown quantity with respect to big downloads.
Bandwidth sharing isn't quite the panacea that a lot of people think it is.
For starters, you have to get the end user to download and install a piece of software first (torrent client, etc) and then direct them to the larger downloads of the actual software you're distributing.
Next, you can't just build this feature into something like our PortableApps.com Platform (with it's built in software downloader/app store/updater) as many end users are prohibited from running P2P software by their ISPs and we can't depend on them being technically knowledgeable enough to know whether or not they're allowed to.
Then you have the issues with routers and firewalls and punching holes in them to allow people to upload to others as well as download (which is a bit easier with upnp but not always automatic).
Then you have the issue that much of the world is still on metered connections. Here in NYC I have the choice between slow DSL provided by one company (and some resellers that use the same line), fast but unreliable cable provided by one company (no resellers or competitors), no fiber (Verizon cancelled FiOS buildouts), or wireless (which carries a limit of 5GB per month and you pay $10 per GB after that). I opted for the fast but unreliable cable and a wireless hotspot as a backup for the several hours a month the cable goes down. Lots of the world has even fewer options than I do.
And finally, most legitimate webhosts prohibit any kind of P2P hosting on their networks, so you can forget about running a torrent tracker on your regular web server. You can go with a second tier provider that is more forgiving (or clueless) but then you have the issues associated with such a provider (likely illegal activities on the same network, likely security issues, etc).
There are other issues and some workarounds for the above, of course, this is just my personal experience with researching it for PortableApps.com over the years.
Some parts of the problem sound like they could be described as a tragedy of the commons. Things would be more efficient all around if we just allowed intelligent bandwidth sharing through P2P, but network administrators concerned about the impact on their particular networks prevent such moves, actually making everything less efficient.
Offer-based installers are one way of monetizing and have become exceedingly popular, especially with closed-source freeware. Unfortunately, most of these installers are designed to trick users into installing (or go so far as to install without use consent). To SourceForge's credit, they make a single offer which is clearly defined and even have a link to a page explaining why the offer is made. Compare this to your typical download from Download.com which includes multiple offers including several tricks to get you to install (pages that seem to be license agreements for the main software but install adware when you click agree, pages that list a standard and a custom install type and you'll get adware unless you pick custom and uncheck the offer, etc).
The other option is freemium pricing, free for smaller users but bigger users pay. To go this route, you basically need to go after the enterprise to make money. Github has taken this route from the beginning and achieved profitability in 2009 if I recall. I'm not sure if Github is still profitable, but they got $100m in funding last year, so they have money to burn. That could be why the added binary hosting back in. They had it originally but removed it due to costs years ago. Still, I'm unsure if they would put up with a project as large as the ones on SourceForge (PortableApps.com, FileZilla, GIMP for Windows, etc) as that is quite a bit of bandwidth to give away for free as a loss leader (since Github wouldn't even make money on ads for those downloads). Unfortunately, SourceForge has no enterprise offerings at present, so this isn't a viable revenue source today. They could explore this route in the future as a competitor to Github, though. It would be a bit of a pivot for them and not without its own risks. But, even if they go down this route, they still need to have the revenue today to keep going. So, it's a bit of a catch 22.