GForge

GForge Advanced Server
Developer(s) GForge Group
Initial release June 21, 2006 (2006-06-21)
Stable release
6.4.2 / March 9, 2016 (2016-03-09)[1]
Type Collaborative development environment
License Proprietary
Website https://gforgegroup.com
GForge Community Edition
Developer(s) GForge Group
Last release
5.7 / April 23, 2010 (2010-04-23)
Written in PHP
Operating system Linux, Unix
Type Collaborative development environment
License GNU GPL
FusionForge
Screenshot of project landing page in 2017
Stable release
6.1 / October 5, 2018 (2018-10-05)
Written in PHP
Operating system Linux, Unix, Windows, OS X, etc.
Available in Multilingual (26 languages including french, english, german, spanish, italian, etc ) [2]
Type Collaborative Development Environment
License GNU GPL2+
Website www.fusionforge.org

GForge is a free software fork of the web-based project-management and collaboration software originally created for SourceForge, called Savane. GForge was licensed under the GNU General Public License. GForge provides project hosting, version control (CVS, Subversion and Git), bug-tracking, and messaging.

In February 2009 some of the developers of GForge continued development of the old open source code under the new name of FusionForge after GForge Group focused on GForge Advanced Server.[3]

FusionForge is a free software application descendant of the forge (web-based project-management and collaboration software) originally created for running the SourceForge.net platform. FusionForge is licensed under the GNU General Public License, and is a fork/renaming of the code which was previously named GForge. FusionForge is the inheritor of SourceForge.

FusionForge provides project hosting, version control (GNU arch, Bazaar, CVS, Darcs, Git, Mercurial and Subversion), bug-tracking, collaboration features (wiki, document management), and a plugin system to extend standard features which can be deployed to run a self-hosted forge.

History

In 1999, VA Linux hired four developers, including Tim Perdue, to develop the SourceForge.net service to encourage Open Source development and support the Open Source developer community. SourceForge.net services were offered free of charge to any Open Source project team. Following the SourceForge launch[4] on November 17, 1999, the free software community rapidly took advantage of SourceForge.net, and traffic and users grew very quickly.

As another competitive web service, "Server 51", was being readied for launch, VA Linux released the source code for the sourceforge.net web site on January 14, 2000[5] as a marketing ploy to show that SourceForge was 'more open source'. Many companies began installing and using it themselves and contacting VA Linux for professional services to set up and use the software. However, their pricing was so unrealistic, they had few customers.[6] By 2001, the company's Linux hardware business had collapsed in the dotcom bust.[7] The company was renamed to VA Software and called the closed codebase SourceForge Enterprise Edition to try to force some of the large companies to purchase licenses.[8] This prompted objections from open source community members.[9] VA Software continued to say that a new source code release would be made at some point, but it never was.

Some time later, 2002,[10] Tim Perdue left VA, started GForge open source project based on the last publicly released version, 2.6, and merged the debian-sf fork, previously maintained by Roland Mas and Christian Bayle, into the project.

In February 2009, the Gforge GPL branch was forked to FusionForge in a renewed effort by Mas, Bayle, and others to revive the neglected GPL codebase and merge a number of other Gforge forks into a single project. Shortly after the launch of FusionForge.org the Gforge.org site switched from Gforge GPL (4.x) to Gforge AS (5.x) and increased the focus on supporting Gforge AS. This site change, as a formal response to the FusionForge fork, is believed to signal the end of the Gforge GPL branch.

GForge Advanced Server

A new version of GForge dubbed GForge Advanced Server (GForge AS for short) was rewritten from scratch based on newer UML concepts. It saw first public release on June 21, 2006. Unlike the previous versions of GForge, this one is not open source although it can be used freely (with some restrictions on project limits). GForge AS is also written in PHP but encrypted with ionCube to prevent people from reading the source code. It continues to use PostgreSQL as the database engine with optional Oracle and MySQL support. Plug-ins for Eclipse IDE as well as Microsoft Visual Studio (only for customers and with no trial available) and other related tools were added to increase developer functionality. Workflow process management to handle making use of the full software life cycle from inception, bug tracking to new release enhancement citation.

Notable Installations

It is hard to determine with certainty whether these sites run on the open source or the closed source version of GForge. The guesses were made on 2010-02-15 based on the look-and-feel of these sites.

FusionForge

In 2007, Bull announces the first public release of Novaforge[11] which is based on the GForge open source branch.

In February 2009 some of the developers of GForge continued development of the old open source code under the new name of FusionForge after GForge Group focused on GForge Advanced Server.[12] One objective is to merge GForge forks into a single project, hence the prefix Fusion.

In 2011, FusionForge is selected as part of the Coclico project.[13] It aims to fusion 3 existing trees of forked forges: FusionForge, Codendi & Novaforge.[14]

With this new start, FusionForge developer community is defined as ″small but engaged which has been able of forking (twice!) when they were not happy with the situation of the software they work with″.[15]

End 2013, main Savane maintainer Sylvain Beucler joins FusionForge[16] as INRIA contractor for 2 years. Main contributors to FusionForge include individual contributors such as Roland Mas,[17] small companies such as TrivialDev

In 2017, FusionForge software is the first forge software to contribute to the Software Heritage initiative, providing a connector to retrieve any information from FusionForge installation.[18]

Notable public Installations

See also

References

  1. ↑ "GForge v6.4.2 Released". March 9, 2016. Retrieved 2016-10-28.
  2. ↑ "Translations files available".
  3. ↑ "GForge is now FusionForge".
  4. ↑ "Slashdot: SourceForge Goes Public Beta".
  5. ↑ "Slashdot: SourceForge Code Release". January 14, 2000.
  6. ↑ "The GForge Story". Archived from the original on October 15, 2011.
  7. ↑ A Little Something for SourceForge. Linux Gram. October 22, 2001. VA Linux Systems, now reduced by the economic stress and strain from a high-flying hardware OEM to a much soberer software peddler, has hired in Colin Bodell as senior VP of product development for VA's SourceForge collaborative development platform
  8. ↑ Maureen O'Gara (August 27, 2001). VA Goes Proprietary. Linux Gram. VA Linux Systems, which is basing its continued survival on being able to sell its SourceForge application software to the enterprise, is shifting to a proprietary software model.
  9. ↑ "Slashdot: SourceForge Fails To Forge Source?". May 9, 2000.
  10. ↑ "GForge - about us".
  11. ↑ "Bull lets out NovaForge".
  12. ↑ "GForge is now FusionForge".
  13. ↑ "Project Coclico".
  14. ↑ "Novaforge merge in FusionForge".
  15. ↑ "The history of FusionForge and GForge".
  16. ↑ "Sylvain Beucler to join FusionForge effort".
  17. ↑ "French interview of Roland Mas aka lolando".
  18. ↑ "FusionForge part of Software Heritage".
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