SourceForge and Slashdot change owners again
DHI Group, formerly Dice Holdings, has completed the sale of Slashdot Media, including Slashdot and SourceForge, to SourceForge Media. SourceForge Media is part of BIZX, LLC. The amount involved in the acquisition has not been disclosed.
The DHI Group acquired publisher Geeknet in 2012 for $20 million. The Sourceforge Media company was created specifically to handle the transaction from DHI to BIZX. Logan Abbott, one of the owners of BIZX, says on the Foss Force site that Slashdot will remain as it is and that no drastic changes are expected at the tech site in the short term.
The slogan “News for nerds, stuff that matters” remains high on the agenda. When asked by Foss Force whether Slashdot has lost some of its former glory over the years, Abbott reports that the site still attracts millions of unique users each month. The loyal community on Slashdot, many of whom have been on the site for more than a decade, is seen as the most important pillar by Abbott. Even with the increased noise on today’s internet than when Slashdot was founded, Abbott says the site has held up well.
Despite Abbott’s positive words, Foss Force has learned from several sources that Slashdot will soon be laid off, including employees who have run the site for a long time. Some of those jobs would be re-filled, but by cheaper workers. Other jobs would disappear altogether.
The long-haunted SourceForge is still seen by Abbott as an important repository for code. The site has been struggling for some time to keep projects on its platform, partly due to increased competition from GitHub, among others, but not least because of the strange leaps that SourceForge made by supplying adware or ‘trial software’ for example. This happened, among other things, with so-called ‘abandoned projects’. Among other things, photo editing program GIMP was suddenly bundled with an installer from SourceForge with advertisements.
Still, SourceForge should once again become a reliable repository of open source projects, both for development, collaboration and distribution. Abbott says he disagrees with some of the past choices regarding SourceForge’s revenue model. The programs in question should be rolled back as soon as possible in order to be a trusted name again soon.
SourceForge must be restored to its former glory, according to the CEO. This will also change the entire method of development via the site, including the entire infrastructure of the site.