Talk:Comparison of source-code-hosting facilities/Archive 1

Archive 1

Ad-free?

What does "add-free" mean?

ad-free means without ads (advertisement). 84.24.169.50 16:15, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

This page look should be improved

This page does not look good, if compared with another "comparison" pages of Wikipedia. Some descriptive text must be added before the big table, and the table look must be completely changed to match other "comparison" pages. Look at some examples:

Comparison_of_instant_messengers Comparison_of_Web_browsers Comparison_of_Media_players

I will probably do this later when I have some time, here is a site that has alot of the information borken down if someone wants to do it before me: http://www.ibiblio.org/fosphost/exhost.htm --Deemo 19:28, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Compare groupware/communication facilities. This would be very useful for teams to collaborate. I am particularly looking for a site that can allow NNTP access to forums/mailing-lists, or better yet, complete groupware, like Kolab.

Asynchrony.com

Does not seem to be offering hosting for software hosting projects, or I can't find it. Link spam? --CodeGeneratR 20:00, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Two new ones

Should Microsoft CodePlex and Google Hosting also be included here? -- Peter 10:17, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Free software

Why isn't there a column for noting which hosting facilities are either run using proprietary software or host their services with entirely free software? --71.254.12.10 04:14, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Yep, adding a column now! Mike Linksvayer 04:45, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

CodePlex & Open Source

From [1]:

What does an open source license mean? An “open source” style license means users are, without a fee, permitted to view the code, and run it at least for non-commercial purposes.

Neither open source nor free software definitions apply to these terms. The given definition seems to be similar to shared source. So I will remove the CodePlex entry. --Hyperyl 17:44, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Good call. Shinobu (talk) 15:13, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

SourceForge TOS section 6

Odd how this article completely fails to mention this. Shinobu (talk) 12:04, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, there are 27 sections in the agreement[2]. Why should section 6 be mentioned specifically? 88.112.14.27 (talk) 22:41, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Please read section six, instead of just looking at the total number of sections and closing the page. Shinobu (talk) 15:09, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I've read the page several times, but could not determine why you think section 6 is so important. That's why I asked why it should be mentioned specifically. So could you clarify what's so special about section 6? 88.112.14.27 (talk) 16:16, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Gna is listed twice.

Under "General" and "Specific Requirements". Gna requires its projects all be free software as defined by the FSF, so would that be allowable for "general"? They're both listed under slightly different names (Gna.org versus Gna!, one uses the https URL); that's a bit odd. -Matt 19:19, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Fixed Clconway (talk) 16:18, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

This page is not really about "libre" software, "gratis" software, or even "gratis" hosting of software: it is about open source software. Several of the listed facilities (e.g., Microsoft's) do not require the hosted software be "free" in the Free Software Foundation sense. I propose the page be moved to "Comparison of open source software hosting facilities". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Clconway (talk • contribs) 16:28, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

What features do they offer?

- Webspace for Homepages?
- Dynamic Homepages with PHP/Python or Perl?
- Bugtracker System? Which one?
- SVN, CVS or GIT access?
- FTP access?
It would be nice if these features could be added to the list for better comparison.
--84.56.171.213 (talk) 07:37, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree, but add also: do they support mailing lists? (also, I don't understand the request for listing of svn etc. access, that is most prominent in the page now). LiamH (talk) 13:56, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

What about public/private repositories?

I am looking for a source code repository that allows me to lock the project with a password even for viewing (not just for modifying). The article doesn't mention such an option. Is it because Free Software Hosting Facilities by definition require the code to be publicly viewable? Sandman2007 (talk) 16:29, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

It's not required by definition; in fact, you're describing the cathedral model of software development. However, the purpose of a project hosting site is usually to allow everyone to find and explore the project itself. --Mike (talk) 05:47, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

software hosting software?

Is there simmilar list of software hosting sotfware? I mean, like gforge, trac etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.27.97.50 (talk) 16:52, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Linkfarm and inclusion criteria

The Website columns need to be removed per WP:EL and WP:NOT#LINK. Given that there is no inclusion criteria per WP:LIST, all entries without their own Wikipedia article should be removed. --Ronz (talk) 00:03, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I removed the links. --Ronz (talk) 19:40, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

What's "Code review"?

The comparison table has a "Code review" column. I know what a code review is, but how can this be a feature? Do they have robots that are going to review my code? I don't get it.

"Code review" means Code review system like Launchpad's one or Google's one.--211.121.56.112 (talk) 04:33, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

BerliOS

Is there a reason BerliOS is missing from the features table? 64.7.147.58 (talk) 03:55, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Requesting an addition

I'm associated with ActiveState, so (as per Wikipedia guidelines) I wanted to request that Workspace from ActiveState be added to the first table. Based on the table columns, here's what I've put together:

Name: Workspace
Code hosting: Yes
Code review: No
Bug tracking: No
Web hosting: No
Wiki: Yes
Translation system: No
Mailing List: No
News Group (NNTP): No
Forum: Yes
Personal branch: Yes
Private branch: Yes
Announce: No
Build system: No
Team: No
Other: Automated backup, blogs

Dbarefoot (talk) 04:59, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Where's the notability? --Hm2k (talk) 09:35, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

darcs hosting anywhere?

There is no place for darcs in the table. Aren't there any darcs hostings? It's a pity.--Imz (talk) 17:49, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, there's code.haskell.org, but it's very minimalistic (e.g., no built-in bug tracking, so far as I can tell). OCaml Forge also supports darcs, but not seemingly through the GForge interface (I think you have to ssh into the server to access darcs). None of the freely available hosting systems (except for Launchpad, which is built for Bazaar) offer support for SCMs besides CVS, SVN, or GNU Arch. Clconway (talk) 19:04, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

There is http://patch-tag.com/ now --Nomeata (talk) 20:13, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

external link / addition suggested ..

http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sanjiv swarup (talk • contribs) 01:54, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Don't you mean http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Open_Source/Hosting/ ? Shinobu (talk) 15:12, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

agreed . Why dont you put it up in the article Sanjiv swarup (talk) 06:08, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

added. --Hm2k (talk) 17:28, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Popularity -> ranking

Perhaps using some site ranking service would be a better way to measure popularity than user or project count.

This page: Comparison_of_wiki_farms

Uses Alexa for ranking and seems to create good results —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.75.226.154 (talk) 17:59, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Web hosting, wiki

Although I don't know exactly what web-hosting and wiki mean in the table, I don't think Launchpad should be classified as Yes in web-hosting and wiki. It seems launchpad can just link to homepage and wiki. They don't host them. Could somebody please do some clarification? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.119.146.1 (talk) 07:02, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Google Hosting is missing

As noted above (back in 2006), this is an obvious omission: Google Hosting --NealMcB (talk)

It's not missing, it's called Google Code. --Hm2k (talk) 09:48, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

bzr

What about Bazaar / Launchpad.net ? --220.244.61.150 11:15, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

We do need a section about bazaar. Bazaar is a different type of source management that Launchpad.net uses. JoshTime (talk) 16:47, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

License Status

Is it possible to add license status of the hosting facility itself? For example, SourceForge is proprietary and Launchpad is released under AGPL. 118.168.114.231 (talk) 20:30, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

Comparison of open source software hosting facilities → Comparison of open-source software hosting facilities — like Open-source software — Neustradamus (✉) 18:17, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Talk:List of free and open source software packages#Requested move. Jafeluv (talk) 16:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

• That discussion was closed no concensus after 34 days Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:35, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of free and open source software packages which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RM bot 16:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

• That discussion was closed no concensus after 34 days Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:35, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Consider adding repo.or.cz

http://repo.or.cz/ appears to be one of the oldest Git hosting sites around and is pretty popular for hosting development branches of official projects, e.g. of QEMU. Cf. http://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitHosting Andreasfa (talk) 12:44, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

What does Personal / Private branch mean ?

What does Personal / Private branch mean within the context of source repository? How is it different from a regular branch which most version control systems provide?

Is it aka having a hidden (not publicly viewable) version of the source code. If so, isn't this against the philosophy of OSS? Can someone post a link to relevant documentation by a hosting provider who provides such a functionality. For example, the current state of this page lists Tigris.org providing such functionality. But I could not locate any Tigris official documentation which could hint that such a thing exists. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.186.101 (talk) 06:08, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Google Code Translation Service?

The comparison chart states that Google Code has a translation service, which I assume refers to a web-based interface for doing translations (like Launchpad's Rosetta); however I can find no mention of it on the Google Code website or anywhere else. If this refers to integration with Transifex or some third-party system, as opposed to being built-in, then that should be stated 18.242.6.52 (talk) 06:23, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Countries blocked from access

I've added a couple of columns to list countries blocked from accessing or contributing to hosted code. Given that restrictions like these may contravene the FOSS licenses of the software projects hosted by the sites on the comparison page, I think it's important that this information should be included. I've provided the details for SourceForge and Google Code. Would be very grateful for more contributions! zazpot (talk) 00:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

No FOSS license requires that you distribute your program to anyone, so are not impacted by these bans. See: Desert Island test 128.189.242.70 (talk) 22:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm tempted to remove these columns all together as it's not a feature. --Hm2k (talk) 14:02, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

New column to feature table: Private repositories

Recently, Bitbucket started providing unlimited private repositories and you are able to share your private repositories with a maximum of 5 other users. I believe this is a great feature since you don't always want to publish your project right away from the beggining. You can start it in private and when appropriate release it for the community. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.29.97.190 (talk) 15:04, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Codaset

Codaset needs to be added to the list. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Memolipd (talk • contribs) 14:11, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Services that allow authors to profit from ads / donations

I suggest stating which services allow authors to profit from their open source programs. -109.67.201.158 (talk) 10:11, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

"Team" category?

What does the "Team" category mean? What features does a site need to have to put a "Yes" in this column? Pfussell (talk) 22:28, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

It isn't that clear. I see SourceForge has No for team, yet i know you can have multiple members and stuff all on one project and code repository. J. B. Dix (talk) 17:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Notability

Please do not add or change content without citing verifiable and reliable sources. Before making any potentially controversial edits, it is recommended that you discuss them first on the article's talk page. Please review the guidelines at Wikipedia:Citing sources and take this opportunity to add references to the article. Thank you.

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

--Hm2k (talk) 17:21, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Reviewed the notability guidelines at Wikipedia:Notability, but they clearly state that notability guidelines apply to the creation of articles and not their content. So I'm going to go ahead and add another entry in the list. Highspam (talk) 14:53, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree, but must expand this, to cover the whole notion: notability applies to the topics of articles, not entries within an article. Claims added to an article do need to be supported by independent reliable source(s), and can be augmented by primary sources. --Lexein (talk) 15:21, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Suggest reverting revision [15:50, 24 June 2011]

The revision comment is "drop list entries without articles per WP:SAL". In fact, if you review the selection criteria in WP:SAL, nowhere does it mention any notability requirements for list entries. The Wikipedia article on notability specifically states "[notability guidelines] do not directly limit the content of an article or list." The selection criteria mention notability as a common selection criteria but, since this is not mentioned on the discussion page nor in the lead section of the list, it does not apply to this list. Notability guidelines for a Wikipedia article do not apply to entries in lists. Highspam (talk) 23:14, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

What selection criteria would you suggest instead? - MrOllie (talk) 03:29, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

All available ?  :) Highspam (talk) 21:25, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

We can't really just include "all available", because all claims in Wikipedia articles must be verifiable, and articles must not consist entirely of primary sourced (first party) material. I'm a strong proponent of inclusion of material which is independently reliably sourced - after that, primary sources can be used to support details. The word "notable" was mentioned above, but notability is quite explicitly not about the inclusion of content in articles, only the inclusion of articles themselves. For claims, only verifiability, and the reliability of sources matter.

About that diff, I would support restoring any entries supported by 1 independent RS. This is not an onerous burden; most repositories have been discussed in RS. Many sources which appear unreliable at first glance (blogs) can be rehabilitated by researching the author's other publications and frequency of citation in other RS. Example: WP:WikiProject IRC/Sources). --Lexein (talk) 08:33, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Hello? --Lexein (talk) 15:25, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Obvious followup: I'm seeing a revert war going on, claiming that any entries must have "an article", but there has been no explicit consensus about this above. Seems to me that any claim added, as long as it is supported with an inline citation of an independent reliable source with additional support from the primary source (the vendor), should be just fine to add. I mean, RS is RS. No? --Lexein (talk) 15:25, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Has something with an independnent reliable source been removed? If so, I did it in error. - MrOllie (talk) 15:47, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I suppose I'm advocating 3 things: adding {{citation needed}} for 7 days or more before deletion, saying See Talk in the edit summary with a reminder of the need for independent sourcing (and the impending deletion), and stating the actual inclusion criteria for this list, per WP:LIST. --Lexein (talk) 19:52, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Reliable source for what? Sources are required for any fact that is challenged or likely to be challenged. So independent reliable sources are definitely needed to verify popularity, because that changes often and is subject to abuse. Aside from popularity, though, what facts might be challenged? Are you saying that every feature listed for every hosting provider should have a source? That's simply not possible.

I don't mean to offend here, but I think we're being a bit over-zealous in our attempts at applying the Wikipedia rules here. I think the list would be far more useful if we include all hosting providers available. Since the total number of these is fairly low (less than 25, it seems), the list does not suffer if we include all possible hosters. Contrast this with, for instance, lists of bands or people, where the list would suffer greatly from not enforcing any notability guidelines (due to dilution of notable entries). Contrast with a list of people who have had sex with Kevin Bacon, where independent reliable sources would be strictly necessary for the list to be accurate. You wouldn't expect to see reliable sources on a list of people (you don't need a source to confirm that someone is a person), nor would you expect to see notability guidelines applied to a list of coin sizes currently manufactured by the US Mint (though, due to the large number of commemorative coins, you would expect to have it apply to a list of all coins ever manufactured by the mint, in which case the list should be called List of Notable Coins Manufactured by the US Mint). Neither Notability nor Verifiability are needed for this list at this time. If we go from less than 2 dozen hosting providers to hundreds of them, then Notability will need to be enforced, in which case the article will need to be renamed to reflect that fact.
Highspam (talk) 18:38, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

GitHub forks and gists shouldn't count

Github's project count are off by a large margin, because most are forks. Many forks don't add anything and are outdated. Many of the forks that do add something never pull-request and thus are never merged into the "morally central" repositories, which means they're either customizations, personal attempts, feature testing, etc. The repositories may share commits, so this count means nothing about how much data a service is handling either. Gists are counting as repositories too, and they count for about 45% (https://github.com/blog/841-those-are-some-big-numbers), but gist it's just a versioned pastebin. 193.136.128.7 (talk) 22:42, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the repositories number should not be used for number of projects. But github doesn't seem to publish any other number. Not sure what to do, perhaps using the page you linked as reference is a first step. 213.100.90.101 (talk) 18:20, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

A bit over one million "projects" only have one follower (presumably, the user that forked). This could help create an estimate of non-project forks.--200.83.246.105 (talk) 11:27, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Following the description in the search page, it's possible to count the public non-forks and forks (note: I executed these searches while logged out to include only public repositories). Browsing the gists page gives us the latest public gist number, and it's an excelent estimate because all gists are numbered sequentially, whether public, anonymous or private. The total number of repositories given in the homepage is greater than the sum of these because it includes private repositories, so if you subtract the sum from the total, you can estimate the number of private repositories. I've updated the article with some of this information and respective references. Please remove this topic whenever you feel comfortable about it. 193.136.128.7 (talk) 21:46, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

BTW, I've scrapped through BitBucket's search page and I've summed up each listed repository and its respective forks, and the result was 94559. However, this would be original research. If anyone cares to try it and host the result, here's the code I've used (requires Emacs and Wget): bitbucket.el. Running simultaneously from two machines a dozen miles apart and in different networks gave the same count. 193.136.128.7 (talk) 23:11, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Needed: definition of attributes/features in section "Features"

In section Features, a definition of what is meant by each of these attributes/features would be welcome for clarity. --Mortense (talk) 08:11, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Add Allura

SourceForge's Allura (FOSS) platform is missing. 190.50.102.241 (talk) 21:36, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

What is "Code Hosting"?

What does Code Hosting mean? Doesn't every site on this list host your code? Isn't that the point? --Astronouth7303 (talk) 16:55, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Erm...ya, I never really saw that column, what is it doing there anyways? One of them says 'yes' but is yellow, I'm not sure what that's about. Highspam (talk) 16:11, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw that too. It has no place on this page. And if they aren't "Yes", the entries should definitely not be on that page. Jeshan (talk) 04:44, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Suggest removing "Popularity" Section

Most of the information in the "Popularity" section is dated, difficult to verify, incorrect, or missing. I suggest we update it with verifiable references or remove it completely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.218.106.250 (talk) 05:36, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

I think that removing the entire section is definitely unneccessary: Facts like "Prominent projects" or "Alexa rank" can be easily verified. However, we could probably remove columns like "Teams", "Branches" and "Bug reports" as those are mostly empty. --91.114.191.180 (talk) 12:46, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I have just removed those three columns (PS: the previous comment was made by me when I was not logged in) --Marko Knoebl (talk) 23:58, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Reading this table

What's the difference between a green "Yes" and a yellow "Yes"? What do the colors mean?

What does "outside" mean in the footnotes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.163.72.2 (talk) 22:02, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I believe it means yes, but it's provided outside of the service. While a normal green yes means it's provided inside. If this can be made clearer, feel free to do so. --Hm2k (talk) 10:32, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't really mean anything. Google Code is said to support web hosting and mailing lists "outside" of its service. By the same token, doesn't every service support every feature if not "inside" then "outside"? I would like to change those two yellow "Yes" boxes to "No" unless I am opposed. Oktal (talk) 20:30, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

C*AN?

Places like CPAN, CTAN, CRAN, and whatever the java one is called - do we want to list those here? Ojw 17:37, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Clearly they should be listed, as should be RForge and R-forge and RForge.

Kjetil B Halvorsen 13:24, 29 August 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kjetil1001 (talk • contribs)