First project rejected from SourceForge
I have to admit I wasn’t expecting to get my SourceForge project registration rejected this morning when I submitted it, but I guess it happens. They wouldn’t have an approval process in place otherwise, would they?
This is the verbatim reply I got (emphasis mine):
Greetings,
The project you are requesting is being rejected, as we have determined that it is a content generating project, rather than a project developing Open Source Software.
SourceForge.net exists to allow projects a development environment for creating Open Source Software. Its purpose is not to host personal content or content which may take up our resources but which no real software development may be realized.
Based on the description of the project you have provided us, your project is being rejected.
Thank you,
SourceForge.net Support
The project in question is a documentation project. That’s a first one for me, and sadly it seems SourceForge considers documentation worthless in comparison to solid code.
I guess it may be a good time to look at the alternatives once again. I haven’t been exactly satisfied with SourceForge recently anyway. I have looked at BerliOS and Google Code, but I guess I should have a look at Alioth, Launchpad and Savannah as well. There are probably other sites apart from these.
You should have contacted me directly about this, until three weeks ago I worked for SourceForge. Your project should have been accepted as a documentation project adjunct to an OSS project, iirc the rules for such things. I’ll email the guy who does the approvals and see if he can reconsider it.
Ok, I heard back from my friend at SourceForge, and he said that what would be most reasonable would be for me to add you to the Supybot project and give you access to the Supybot wiki (and/or any other SourceForge resources you would need). Would that be something you’d be interested?
Believe me, I don’t want to lose an opportunity to get more documentation
@Jeremy
Thanks, but I think I kind of understand SF.net’s reasoning on this. I guess they primarily want to provide framework for developing new software.
To quote Yann Chachkoff from IRC:
“SourceForge considers it is not its job to serve as a host repository for static files regarding other projects
In short, SF was meant to host *development* projects (including the related docs), and definitely isn’t a Wiki or any kind of documentation manager.
If you wrote a doc related to a given project, the best way is probably to submit it to the project itself for inclusion on its own website/tree.”
What you both said is right. The right way to go with documentation projects is (eventual) inclusion in the project itself. I should’ve perhaps gotten in touch with you on how to go about this beforehand, but I figured I’d go ahead and start working on it before I lose interest, and then deal with that business afterwards if I manage to produce something worthy of inclusion to the main project. I also thought that having full control of the source repository would allow certain flexibilities…
By the way, I asked Petr Baudis who runs repo.or.cz whether it’s okay to host sources of documentation projects there, and the answer was yes.
With all due respect, Yann Chachkoff wasn’t one of my former coworkers *at SourceForge*. Having been a team member on the team largely responsible for these policies and the ancillary features SourceForge provides to projects, as well as having hosted Supybot there for five years, I’m aware of what SourceForge offers.
In particular, SourceForge offers a project wiki service which would seem quite suitable for the development of Supybook. I’m offering to add you to the Supybot project and give you full access to the wiki (which we haven’t been using yet) such that you can develop Supybook directly on the official Supybot SourceForge.net project, if you like. Just give me the word; I’m here to help.