Hosting an open source project at several sites

Question

Say I had an open-source project which I wanted to try and generate some exposure for. Would it be considered unethical to set up a project entry for it on several sites such at github, sourceforge and google code, for example?

This would be purely for giving it greater exposure. I realise there might be some practical reasons for doing this, such as wanting to use github for source control, and sourceforge for issue tracking, forums and such. For the sake if this question I'm wanting to focus more on the case where you use one of the sites as the main site for the project, and make "stub" projects on the other sites that point back to the main site.

My gut feeling is that while it may not be outrightly unethical, it might be bordering on the sleezy side...

Answer 1

Stick with one provider. "If you build it, they will come" :)

Besides, once people do start coming, they'll just google the project name anyway. Finding the same project on Sourceforge, Github and Google Code is just going to annoy the hell out of people.

Answer 2

I would suggest choose your preferred host for your project. You can publish about your project on many forums. Exposure will come via search engines.

Answer 3

I don't know about the ethics, but consider the practicalities:

• you will have to do multiple repeated uploads to several different sites, doing it to a single site can be a pain
• users won't know which site to report bugs at
• if you use the SVN/CVS/git repositories, you will have multiple copies of your code in different repositories - a very bad idea

I'm sure there are other problems. So stick to one site - I've been using Google Code for a small project I've just started (CSVfix, if anyone is interesed) and I can recommend Google as being very easy to set up.

Answer 4

I think this is fine, for the reason that each provider may have something you want. You should pick the services that are best for your project. For example:

• Google code has file hosting, but the issue management is terrible, so
• Launchpad has great bug tracking, but no wiki, and we use Mercurial, so
• Bitbucket.org has mercurial hosting etc..

So it might be reasonable to use Launchpad for bug tracking, and Google code for hosting files and wiki, and Bitbucket.org for hosting source.

Answer 5

I consider having several (independent) mirrors to be a benefit for the community, because such distributedness assures more reliable accessibility of your public work, now and in future (it will survive the failure of any single hosting site).

That's why I want to keep track of the available diffeent options to publicly host open-source projects:

• Which public hosting sites for darcs projects are there?
• Which public Git hosting sites are there that are free software?

I believe it's rather ethical (or moral) to put some effort into ensuring that your public work is published in the most accessible way (well documented, and with some guarantees about it being accessible at any moment when someone is interested).

The effort for you to push your work to several places independently (I mean, they won't depend on each other) and manage all this is probably not really a nightmare (as suggested in some other answers here), especially with a DVCS. For example, one can even set up Git so that one pushes to several places with just one command.

I feel that unless you are forcing someone to read something done by you, but you are rather just putting your stuff somewhere for it to be findable and accessible if someone is interested, you are not egoistic or ego-whatever.

Answer 6

Services spanning these various hosts will be inconvenient and difficult to maintain. For the above mentioned reliance on search engines to generate traffic take care to chose a name that differentiates your project from the web noise. A clear indication that traffic will not arrive is if your project first gets a re-recommendation on spelling. Take for example the people who brought you the chattr project from GNU. Immediately chatr is suggested as the proper search and your traffic will suffer accordingly.

Answer 7

as i has already been said having to maintain the code on several hosts will make it more trouble then it is worth. What you have to think is you would need to make sure that it uploads properly over several hosts, it would more then likely cause confusion to some over if one copy is legit and the others aren't which in turn could cause a bad name for the project before you even start. End of the day there are much more, better ways to spread the word of your project, social networking sites, specific related forums are two main ones for you to consider, either way you would be better off spending your time posting to several sites then you would uploading and maintaining code on several sites.

Answer 8

I don't know why you think it would be unethical or sleezy. Maybe you can say more about that so people could address your concerns directly. To measure that, consider if you are intentionally breaking the rules of the service, lying to anyone about how you are using the service, and being deceptive in some other way. If you are using multiple services, I don't think you have anything to hide.

Consider the Perl community, which is the one I deal with. Several projects are hosted on one of the source control services, such as SourceForge, Google Code, or Github. The main distribution for most Perl stuff is CPAN, though. Other people may distribute through Freshmeat or some other service. The main issue tracker comes from Best Practical, which hosts a free RT for every Perl module on CPAN. Most of the people I know use the best from more than one service. Indeed, the Web 2.0 way is to create applications by cobbling together services from multiple vendors. :)

You should also think about the social construction of these free sites. Places like SourceForge and Github give out free accounts, but they also sell services. They get the buzz through the free stuff that allows them to sell the premium services. I don't see anything wrong with that. If you're using the free services, just realize that in return for your free use, they get to use you as free tester, advertiser, and so on. Again, I don't see anything wrong with that. It's just part of the deal. You aren't just taking from them, you are also giving to them. There's an exchange between consenting parties.

What would be unethical, I think, is any service that forbids you to use another service or intentionally sets up a situation which would make it hard for you to use another service by not being compatible with common tools or not giving you access to your data (e.g. somehow disallowing git-svn, and so on).