Commercial Open Source Software

The Apache OpenOffice.org project announced the availability of OpenOffice.org 3.4, see the new features and improvement in the Release Notes. You might get the gist of some of the new features looking at the Apache OpenOffice SourceForge video, featured also on FeatherCast.

Continue reading ‘Apache OpenOffice.org 3.4: Download it Now!’

SourceForge just a forge? Not quite, not anymore. SourceForge is investing time and resources to help open source projects to grow, and we do that through numerous ways. Take our recent collaboration with one of the most famous open source projects: the OpenOffice project, now incubated at the Apache Software Foundation.

SourceForge helps the Apache OpenOffice by serving downloads for the Extensions and the Templates sites, as well as the shortly upcoming Apache OpenOffice 3.4 Release.

Read the full article at SourceForge blog.

SourceForge just a forge? Not quite, not anymore. SourceForge making public its partnership with BerliOS has just inaugurated its first collaboration agreement with other open source players.

Having just completed a couple of important partnership agreements, it’s probably a good time to look back and see where we have been and where are we going. Let me start by telling you more about our first agreement. BerliOS - probably the second oldest open source public forge after SourceForge - has recently signed a collaboration with SourceForge, to serve all its downloads via our global mirror network.

Want to know more about where are we at? Read the full blog post at SourceForge blog.

Over the last months we’ve been analyzing SourceForge historical data, looking for trends and correlations. We’ve found factors that can help project administrators to get both more downloads and more visibility.

1. Project Icons
2. Screenshots
3. Project Title, blurb, and full description fields
4. Feature bullets
5. Accurate project categorization
6. More frequent releases, and flag latest release
7. Rapid turnaround on tickets

All things being equal, projects with these elements are more prone to capture people’s interest than projects without them.

A user visits a Project Summary Page either because they know exactly what they are looking for - in which case you don’t need to provide them with nuts and bolts - or because they are looking for something, and they don’t know if your project solves their problems. In this latter case, you have just a few moments to make a good first impression. Here’s a few tips to help you do just that.

1. “Put an alligator over the pocket” (W. Allen, With our Feathers - “The Scrolls” - 1975).When you put a logo on your project, people associate it with certain core values like trust, quality, reliability, experience, etc. If you don’t believe it, read Woody Allen’s “put an alligator” and learn how Lacoste eventually became famous!

Read the full article at SourceForge blog.

I joined Geeknet as the Senior Director of Business Development at SourceForge, and I am responsible to grow and extend our ecosystem. I am excited to bring in all my experience in the open source business and my understanding of open source communities to Sourceforge.

SourceForge played a fundamental role in the development of the open source world as we know it today, and we are working to make it more and more relevant to all its stakeholder groups, ranging from casual users to developers, enterprises and customer advertisers.

We are now testing new features to help our projects to grow, and as soon as they’ll be available to the general public we’ll let you know through our blog. We are actually scheduling one-to-one meetings aimed at better serving projects’ needs, so if you run a project and you want to know more about what we have to offer to you, drop me a line at rgaloppini@geek.net.