End of an era
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| penguinist Jun 19, 2014 9:41 AM EDT |
This is indeed sad to see Freecode (formerly called Freshmeat) go static. This site has served a valuable function for the Linux community and I think we are all appreciative of their contributions over the years. What I think has happened to bring this on are the great improvements we have seen in repository maintenance. Each distro carefully maintains its own repo, unsually with 10's of thousands of applications ready to install. So, while in the past we had some need to do our own tracking and installations (dependency check, configure, make, make install) of applications, today there is little that does not already exist staying within the distro's repo system where dependencies are automatically resolved and builds are pre-tested for us in our environment. This is a good thing, and in a certain sense, the Linux community has outgrown its need for an independent catalog like Freecode. Having said that, I'm sure I will miss having the Freecode resource available going forward. Special thanks to all the Freecode maintainers for your years of hard work. You pulled us through an era, and helped us to reach the next level. |
| dave Jun 19, 2014 10:25 AM EDT |
I was a fan of freshmeat when it began (username: dave) and felt like a central database of free software was exactly what the world needed at the time. I was very happy for Scoop when he sold it in mid 1999, so he could be financially rewarded for his good work. The repositories of today are distribution specific, are they not? And they only include the software that has been packaged for that distro. While that's great and convenient for the users, they are not exhaustive across the entire free software ecosystem. It's too bad that there wasn't enough interest in the site to keep it going. Could they not have donated it to the Linux Foundation? Maybe someone will see an opening here and create a new site to be that central database of free software projects, and make it even more lively, interactive and high traffic than freecode was. |
| gus3 Jun 19, 2014 6:14 PM EDT |
Does this mean the Freecode link to the right will go away? :( |
| bob Jun 19, 2014 9:18 PM EDT |
:( |
| theBeez Jun 20, 2014 5:43 AM EDT |
The reason I posted this was that I've used Freecode to announce releases. And although it seems (according to the press release) traffic has died down over the years AND I also used other resources for announcement, I always saw a sharp boost in downloads right after a release announcement. Apart from that, it was a nice source to recap briefly what major changes had been applied. I also used it to browse around and dig up some nice (but fringe) tooling. Finally, it served me as a "hub" to all kinds of other resources around my projects. Although it is suggested that other alternatives are available, it's not just quite the same. I'll miss it, I surely will! |
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