Google Code Deprecates Download Service For Project Hosting 185
New submitter c0d3g33k writes "Google Project Hosting announced changes to the Download service on Wednesday, offering only 'increasing misuse of the service and a desire to keep our community safe and secure' by way of explanation. Effective immediately, existing projects that offer no downloads and all new projects will no longer be able to create downloads. Existing projects which currently have downloads will lose the ability to create new downloads by January 2014, though existing downloads will remain available 'for the foreseeable future.' Google Drive is recommended as an alternative, but this will likely have to be done manually by project maintainers since the ability to create and manage downloads won't be part of the Project Hosting tools. This is a rather baffling move, since distributing project files via download is integral to FOSS culture."
And no one was surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Github did this recently (Score:3, Insightful)
True. But Google Drive is not exactly known for easy to read URLs.
Re:So, "Don't Be Evil..." (Score:3, Insightful)
Any public file sharing system is liable to be abused period. This includes version control systems. It is no excuse for yanking the service. FWIW I have never seen people abuse either of those services for file serving.
Re:what's wrong with the command line (Score:2, Insightful)
Because end users don't have SVN?
Re:So? (Score:3, Insightful)
Amusingly, the biggest counterpoint was that if you want to offer downloads you should probably use google code which is much more user (rather than programmer) friendly.
That's pretty much my view too.
The way I looked at things was that Google Code and SourceForge are a lot more centered around what an end user would want to see (either someone who has no idea about version control and coding, or for a library or something like that even a programmer but who just wants to grab a library to use) while GitHub is a lot more centered around what developers who are actually working on a project want to see.
I mean, just think about what the landing page is: on Google Code you get a page with a description of the project and clear, standardized links to the downloads and documentation, and you have to follow a couple (still standardized) links before you're at the code. On GitHub, pretty much the most prominent thing you see when you go to a project page is the directory listing; it even appears above whatever README is present (if any).
Dropping support for a quick and easy download from the former is a lot more baffling of a move than dropping it from the latter.
Re:We've heard of BitTorrent, haven't we? (Score:4, Insightful)
yes, that's the thing that AT&T and comcast will threaten then cut your access if you use. good thinking
Re:Yet Again :( (Score:4, Insightful)
Didn't we all see this coming though? Google used to make it more obvious by slapping "Beta" on everything, but while we aren't paying for it we all know it's the same thing. You get what you pay for.
They try out products that they hope will eventually make them money. You adopt those products because "free" and "kind of cool". Then Google realizes that lots of things are cool, but only some things make money. Product is over, adopter cries.
I like Google products for many things, but I've never felt that I could adopt them for more than personal use because I tend to view products I buy as a long term decision based as much on their long term support prospects as their costs and functionality. That doesn't mean I'm just going to buy Microsoft, but Google has never even pretended that they are in any of this for the long haul, they just put it there and you use it until it isn't there. And when it isn't, they don't apologize because you should have known better.
I think they have a model of throwing things at a wall and seeing what sticks. Perhaps it would be better if they had a mass of product people who were as smart as their developers are and could figure out how to make these things profitable, but I don't think they do. Indeed, I think a good product person is just as rare a quantity as a good developer is, if not more so.
Way to go, Dropbox users (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember when it was normal to move files around with standard protocols, which worked reliably and didn't require any bizarre shit? And then remember when someone came up with a great idea of offering file storage service, with the caveat that you would have to use weird special software in order to upload and download your files, so that we could move toward a situation where it's not always necessarily available (e.g., if the weird software hasn't been ported to your box yet) not as easily scriptable, and just didn't work as well?
People, when that happened, you were supposed to laugh in Dropbox's face, slapping your knee while between chuckles you weakly uttered "oh my god, what a stupid idea! And how insulting for you to think we're stupid enough to fall for it!"
That's what you were supposed to say. Instead, it seems that a bunch of people said, "oh, cooool!!!" instead.
So of course Google had to go make Google Drive, to catch up on being as horrible as Dropbox, so that Dropbox wouldn't get the whole market of stupid people. Stupid people are a valuable market.
But once they had to deal with stupid people and not-stupid people, they had a problem: wouldn't it be more profitable, if we could get non-stupid people to do things The Stupid Way? You know, run our "drive" software instead of rsync, sftp, etc?
So here we are. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for making these fucking weird nonstandard clients the new norm that everyone is expected to put up with. I just realized something: you all didn't really hate AOL, did you? It stopped being "cool" (?!) but you never understood why it wasn't cool, huh?
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
RMS, is that you?
Not sure what domain your project is in, but unless your target market is "Linux, Emacs users who know C" odds are you're cutting a goodly number of potential users out with that attitude. Certainly there are tools that is appropriate for, but the VAST majority of users don't have a compiler on their systems, much less know how to use one.
Is that a tragedy of the Microsoft-ocracy keeping the world closed for users? I don't think so. [Car analogy coming up] Just because I could technically acquire all of the tools and knowhow to replace any particular part on my car, doesn't mean it's the best use of my money and time to do so. Even if the tools were all free (as in the case of GCC et al.), it's unlikely that it would be in the best interests of a non-techy to take the time to learn to use them, much less learn to troubleshoot them when `./configure && make && make install` doesn't go according to plan. To many people, computers are just tools to get other non-computer related work done, and there's nothing wrong with that. Some people like to tinker with their cars, others just want to drive to work and park them.
Even a user who doesn't know how to fix bugs & recompile can be a useful asset to an Open Source project. I've found that some of my non-technical users are the most details oriented when it comes to finding edge case bugs and documenting what it takes to reproduce them. Often enough those are the kinds of bugs that take me two minutes to fix but would have taken hours to track down if not for a complete reproducer reported by a user.
As far as giving people the wrong idea about Free Software, which is worse: Users thinking Free Software is about the price or that it's unusable junk that only nerd/hacker/terr'ists actually use? I've already read articles where less-than-savy authority/law enforcement types have considered simply having Linux installed on a system as evidence of criminal activity. Making Free Software cryptic and difficult to use (neigh unto impossible for certain groups of users) certainly doesn't advance the cause any.
Re:Addendum (Score:3, Insightful)
Forgive them. Products of a school system that has taught them that everything they do is worthy. The world owes them. ...
A trophy to every participant. Wining and losing are the same. As long as you show up
Google owes them everything forever. Anything less in their world view really is evil.
They feel they are being ROBBED.
You can not invalidate their feelings. That will make you insensitive and evil.
Re:Way to go, Dropbox users (Score:2, Insightful)
Dropbox has a REST API you can use to upload, via standard HTTP, and a website you can use to do the same thing if you're so much of a tard that you can't write a little bit of code.
Re:So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course they do. Because most OSS software won't compile without error. 9 times out of ten it takes some amount of fucking about and searching to find what's missing or what arcane thing needs typing at the console to make it build. If you're not a developer don't bother.