Under new management, SourceForge moves to put badness in past

No more nasty fake "download" button ads, which is a good thing-since Google Chrome has started blocking sites that have them.

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It has been six months since the company formerly known as Dice (DHI Group) sold off Slashdot Media-the business unit that runs Slashdot and SourceForge-to BIZX, LLC, a San Diego-based digital media company. Since then, the new management has been moving to erase some of the mistakes made under the previous regime-mistakes that led to the site becoming a bit of a pariah among open source and free software developers.

In an e-mail to Ars, Logan Abbot-the new president of Slashdot and SourceForge-said, "SourceForge was in the media a lot last year due to several transgressions, which we have addressed since the acquisition. Unfortunately, the media has thus far elected not to cover the improvements (probably because bad press is more popular)." In the conversation that followed, Abbot emphasized the transformation underway at SourceForge.

Abbot has an uphill climb, to be sure. The shifting nature of the software development world has made repositories such as GitHub a go-to for open source projects of all sorts, while the focus on application downloads has shifted heavily toward the mobile world. But Abbot said he believes SourceForge is still "a great distribution channel," and that developers will come back to host with the repository "when end users see us as a trusted destination once again."

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