DotNetNuke pans SourceForge in CodePlex switch

In a blog post , co-founder and VP of core technology, Joe Brinkman, defended DotNetNuke’s decision to shift, claiming it ‘was not something done out of impulse’.

Among the reasons provided for the move, Brinkman said DotNetNuke wanted a non-advertising supported host with access to ‘better project stats’ and that was ‘more responsive’ when posting new features and bug fixes.

He also said that CodePlex would provide access to a higher concentration of the Windows and .NET communities than SourceForge, and that CodePlex would give DotNetNuke ‘better exposure’ than its open source rival.

Brinkman criticised SourceForge for ‘selling ads which were harmful to the very OS projects they were hosting’.

“CodePlex is a better home for us [because] we have more control over the advertising,” said Brinkman.

“On SourceForge it was not uncommon to see companies like Kentico [a U.S.-based rival] targeting ads to our SourceForge listing. I personally thought that was over the top.”

Brinkman said DotNetNuke would ‘also want to move off’ CodePlex if they post advertising around the company’s distribution page in the future.

Brinkman was also critical of SourceForge’s responsiveness to development requests.

“As anyone who has been on SourceForge for very long knows, they are not very quick to add features or to fix bugs,” he said.

“It is only in the last year or so that they have started updating SourceForge to be a little more modern.”

Brinkman praised CodePlex for implementing some of his suggestions ‘within a few weeks’ of making them, even before DotNetNuke shifted to it.

“I know that CodePlex will never give us everything we want or could hope for, but at least I know that they are listening and are willing to help when and where they can,” said Brinkman.

Brinkman also expressed confidence that DotNetNuke’s latest move to a Microsoft open source hosting property would not end like its last to the now-defunct GotDotNet site.

GotDotNet closed in July 2007 prior to the launch of CodePlex.

“I am confident that our CodePlex experience will be 1,000 times better than our foray into GotDotNet several years ago,” said Brinkman.

codeplexdevelopmentframeworkmicrosoftsoftwaresourceforgeweb