May 28th, 2009
Can Ohloh bring back Sourceforge mojo?
Time to admit a harsh truth. Sourceforge has been going downhill, relative to the market, for a long time now.
Any open source project with any ambition now has its own forge.
So Sourceforge is striking out in a new direction with the acquisition of Ohloh, a directory of open source projects and developers based, ironically, in Bellevue, Washington, a few miles from Microsoft’s corporate campus.
Who is really buying who is revealed in a quote, on the Sourceforge press release, from Ohloh CEO Scott Collison:
“We have long held SourceForge in high regard. We are eager to combine our skills and insights with SourceForge’s credibility and reach in the open source ecosystem and look forward to joining the SourceForge team.”
If Ohloh can turn Sourceforge back into a money spinner it will be good for everyone.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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