[Gimp-developer] GIMP project's official statement on SourceForge's actions

[Michael Schumacher <schumaml gmx de>]

This is the GIMP project's official statement on SourceForge's
actions[1] in regard to "abandoned" projects on their service.

We are fully aware that since their launch in 1999, SourceForge had been
providing a valuable service to the Free Software community and that
this service may still be relevant to some Free and Open Source Software
projects today.

The GIMP project did benefit from this service: SourceForge was the
place to download the Windows installer for GIMP for many years and we
appreciate it as an important part of GIMP history.

When it comes to distributing GIMP, our goal is to make it as easy as
possible for users to install GIMP.
We do not want our users having to dodge any "offers" or to worry about
possibly installing malware in the process.

With our shared history, it was painful to watch the invasion of the big
green "Download" button ads appearing on the SourceForge site.  Our
decision to move the Windows installers away from SourceForge in 2013
was a direct result of how its service degraded in this respect.

The situation became worse recently when SourceForge started to wrap its
downloader/installer around the GIMP project binaries. That SourceForge
installer put other software apart from GIMP on our users' systems. This
was done without our knowledge and permission, and we would never have
permitted it. It was done in spite of the following promise made by
SourceForge in November 2013 [2]:


"we want to reassure you that we will NEVER bundle offers with any
project without the developers consent." (emphasis in original)


To us, this firmly places SourceForge among the dodgy crowd of download
sites.
SourceForge are abusing the trust that we and our users had put into
their service in the past.

We don't believe that this is a fixable situation.
Even if they promise to adhere to the set of guidelines outlined below,
these promises are likely to become worthless with any upcoming
management change at SourceForge.

However, if SourceForge's current management are willing to collaborate
with us on these matters, then there might be a reduction in the damage
and feeling of betrayal among the Free and Open Source Software communities.

An acceptable approach would be to provide a method for *any* project to
cease hosting at any SourceForge site if desired, including the ability to:


* completely remove the project and URLs permanently, and not allow any
  other projects to take its place

* remove any hosted files from the service, and not maintain mirrors
  serving installers or files differing from those provided by the
  project or wrap those in any way

* provide permanent HTTP redirects (301) to any other location as
  desired by the project


This is not unreasonable to expect from a service that purports to
support the free software community.



[1]
http://web.archive.org/web/20150529094757/https://sourceforge.net/blog/gimp-win-project-wasnt-hijacked-just-abandoned/

[2]
http://web.archive.org/web/20131115022447/http://sourceforge.net/blog/advertising-bundling-community-and-criticism/

-- 
Regards,
Michael
GPG: 96A8 B38A 728A 577D 724D 60E5 F855 53EC B36D 4CDD