[clug] HowtoForge, SourceForge and Github

[Steve Walsh]

Hi George

On 12/11/2015 09:16 AM, George at Clug wrote:
>       Hi,
>
> Would anyone have any comments as to HowtoForge, SourceForge and
> Github ?
>
> There was something on the Internet about Addware and SourceForge?  I
> hope that incident is now over.
>
> Where are these systems originate from and/or are hosted from?  EU or
> USA?
>
> Are HowtoForge and SourceForge managed by the same people, if so who
> are they?
>

No. Sourceforge was originally a GeekNet (thinkgeek, previously VA 
Linux) offering, and hosted software downloads for freeware and 
shareware software. They were sold to Dice Holdings, a recruitment and 
jobs site, in 2012. Earlier this year, they took control of the pages of 
some projects that were previously hosted by them, but had recently 
moved to github, and inserted adware into the install binaries that were 
still available from their site, which led to a concerted mass email 
campaign by reddit users to anyone who hosted a sourceforge mirror, 
exhorting them to cease the hosting and remove the files "for the good 
of the internet".

>
> 2. HowtoForge
>
>
>
> _URL_: http://www.howtoforge.com _Description_:  Provides
> user-friendly Linux tutorials about almost every topic.
>

Howtoforge is a linux-help website that started out as a simple "how to" 
blog. It now takes submissions from anyone who wants to send something 
in, which has led to a reputation for system breakage following their 
tutorials (ie - a large majority of their redhat tutorials start out 
with "first, disable the firewall and SELinux, then down the source 
tarball"). howtoforge was originally hosted in EU, but uses the 
CloudFlare CDN to distribute their website.

Neither of the two are related to each other, despite having "forge" in 
their URL.