Community

If you’ve managed a project on SourceForge.net over the past, oh, decade or so, you’ve probably noticed how the administration pages slowly became more and more horrendous. In a lot of ways, they resembled my cable drawer at home - when I first started putting cables in it, everything was very neat. I took special care to coil the cables up with twist-ties, separate the ethernet cables from the USB cables, and label the AC/DC converter bricks so I’d know which devices they powered.

But things never stay that way. These days, my cable drawer is a frustrating, hateful rat’s nest and it’s hard to find what I need. That’s what happened to our project administration pages; we kept adding bits and pieces of functionality and in-line documentation until they were only truly useful for causing widespread despair and fatigue. We had the best of intentions, but after ten years some things just end up being a mess…and all you can do is dump the drawer out, go through everything, and throw half of it away to restore your sanity.

That’s what we did. The sixty (sixty!) or so project administration pages have been reduced to a handful. All of the in-line documentation has been replaced with helpful links to our site docs. Things are simpler to use, easier to understand, and organized in a much more logical way.

Take a look and let us know what you think! If we’ve forgotten anything, or left out your favorite bit of functionality by accident, feel free to drop us a line or file a support request.

You may have already heard the news, but on Tuesday, March 3, the ownership of Linux.com was officially transferred from SourceForge to the Linux Foundation.

Since the transfer was announced, we’ve had a lot of folks ask us why we did it, how we’ll be involved with the site in the future, and what this will mean for someone who visits Linux.com.

To answer the first of those questions, it’s pretty simple: we know that Linux.com is an important domain, and it should contain content that is driven by the entire Linux community. We believe that the Linux Foundation will be good custodians, and it felt like the right thing to do.

Although the Linux Foundation will be the owners of Linux.com, they’re not going to do it alone. In it’s new form, the site will be “for the community, by the community,” and SourceForge fully intends to be an active member of that community. We’re also going to be responsible for selling ads on the new site (we’re splitting the proceeds with them).

You’ll still be able to access all of the stories and forum posts, but you can expect the overall look and feel of the site to be in flux over the next few months. In the meantime, if you have ideas about what the site should include, the Linux Foundation is inviting you to submit them.