Google's Alternative To Sourceforge.net

Google Inc. has begun testing a new service for hosting open-source projects that leverages its famed search engine to help developers find interesting software to which they can contribute. The Mountain View, Calif., company said yesterday that the project hosting site, available in beta now at http://code.google.com/hosting/, also offers its trademarked minimalist user interface, as well as a powerful back-end database to speed up access and lower downtime.
"We wanted to bring a Googley-style layout," said Greg Stein, a technical lead at Google. "Most open-source developers don't need the workflow features that are available [in other sites] today."

During the announcement, made at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Ore., Stein downplayed competition with existing sites for open-source developers, especially SourceForge.Net.

"SourceForge and Tigris are doing a really good job," he said. "We don't need to take all of the projects."

Fremont, Calif.-based SourceForge has long been the standard for open-source developers, with more than 166,000 projects.

"SourceForge is the place to go," said Jeff Wartes, a software engineer at Seattle-based Whitepages.com Inc. But Wartes said he is "intrigued" by Google's offering, noting that SourceForge's search function is "not that great" and the site has sometimes been slow to add the latest features desired by developers.

Jay Seirmarco, SourceForge.net's general manager, said the site is in the midst of a long-term upgrade that will fix many of the issues users have complained about. He also welcomed Google's move.

"What's good for the open-source community is good for SourceForge," he said.

To underline that, Google's Stein said the two firms are working together to create a common database of open-source project names, to avoid duplication and confusion.

To help developers more efficiently search for worthwhile projects, Google will use its search algorithms to rank projects by the number of participants and the amount of recent activity. Idle projects will be slowly culled from Google's main database. Fake projects put up, according to Stein, by those looking for a "free place to store their MP3s" or hackers looking to gather user passwords will be filtered and shut down.

"We're all open-source developers, so we know what features we need," Stein said.

Google's site won't have -- at least for now -- the ability to search actual source code. Nor will it offer an e-mail system to facilitate communication between programmers.

Google is "moving into the enterprise and this is another key offering," said John Andrews, president of Evans Data Corp., a Santa Cruz, Calif.-based research firm focused on software development. "Overall, it makes sense, complements a number of their other search and segmentation strategies and could facilitate a growing need -- the effective management of open source outside and inside the firewall."

Google's move follows a similar announcement in June by Linux vendor Red Hat Inc.

While Google is not an open-source company like Red Hat, it is considered a strong supporter of open-source, recommending the use of the Mozilla Firefox Web browser and using the MySQL database in-house.

Google has also aggressively pushed out its APIs (application programming interfaces) to enable developers to create "mash-ups," or hybrid Web applications, that draw upon services such as Google Maps.

Stein joked that before settling on the repository as a way for Google to "give back" to the community of open-source developers, it considered starting either a "dating service for geeks" or a "personal training service, to help programmers lose the weight from all of the Mountain Dew they're drinking."

Google's recent forays on multiple fronts into areas that the company can bring onto the database based search platform is really amazing in terms of speed and spread. Considering the fact that the Google database is very effecient - utilizing the technology in a heavy database workload environment will really put Google through the paces. This is also immediate pointer to the fact that Google is actually coming of age and is prepared to explore areas that are related to it's core field - also shows that (and this is only a possibility) in it's present form, it's unlikely that further upgradations to the search technoloy will actually make immediate improvements to search efficiency. The natural move is to use the efforts invested in creating the technology in widening the base of application. (Example is something like a spoon - the creator makes the spoon, everyone uses it; there's little improvement to the spoon over time - the widening in usage happens only through expanding the base of application - like using it as a spatula, a liquid measure... etc..). In all truth, I really do think it is the right direction. What I'm not really impressed about is that Google's looking at a limited dive into the opensource arena. Perhaps this is a move solely aimed as a test before wholeheartedly plunging in. All in all, I do believe that the more the large players in the field, the better the outcome where development is concerned.

well pyost, i wonder why a simple article posting is not acceptable... as unfortunately i didn't have any specific views on it.anyhow, I think its trying to estabilish itself into the open source market. It is quite possible that in distant future, every open sourcist, in a way becomes an employee of google.In anycase, if google can give an orientation and organization to open source, that would be really helpful. Probably this is the first step...

Now that was surpising. So far Google's different web services have been directed towards indivuduals to post their stuff and info to help in the profiling and advertising. What I mean is services like Blogger and GMail. But a sourceforge styled site hardly categorizes to thisGoogle is in the position to do all kinds of things. The company makes so much profit that pulling moves like this are not even slightly risky. And then again any of these "little" (compared to, say, their search) project might pay off in big time. And this is not a bad thing in anyways. Yes google uses these services for advertising and probably to profiling too. But these are minor trade-offs compared to how much they could help the open source community.And think of how much it must piss off big software companies like Microsoft when a big timer like Google sides so strongly with open source community.

well.... I agree over that! Google is going to HURT MIcrosoft...and Who knows after an year we will come to read an artiel over HOW google is going to LAUNCH its first official Linux and that too without getting people of its own working for it officially???Google is on its path of becoming the GOD of Internet! G for GOOGLE ....G FOR GOD!! I think thats what Larry Page and Sergey BRIN would have been thinking while making this company ....ar atleast now!

Now that was surpising. So far Google's different web services have been directed towards indivuduals to post their stuff and info to help in the profiling and advertising. What I mean is services like Blogger and GMail. But a sourceforge styled site hardly categorizes to this

 

<snip>

 

It very well could be that this site will be driven by ad revenue as well, at least enough to make it a zero-sum for Google. It may also be a way to buy substantial community goodwill.

 

There are actually several project sites like Sourceforge, some of them quite large. Sourceforge is what everyone knows, though, so the other sites have done it no harm. I doubt Google's offering will hurt it either. Now, what would be really nice is if Google indexed all of the project sites in one search. Then again, FreshMeat does not do a bad job of this.