GForge
Encyclopedia
GForge is a free software
fork
of the web-based project-management and collaboration software
originally created for SourceForge
, called Savane. GForge is licensed under the GNU General Public License
.
GForge provides project hosting, version control (CVS and Subversion), 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.
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 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 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. By 2001, the company's Linux hardware business had collapsed in the dotcom bust.
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. This prompted objections from open source community members. 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, Tim Perdue left VA, started GForge open source project based on the last publicly released version, 2.6, and merged the debian-sf fork, which had been maintained all along 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 Roland Mas, Christian Bayle, and many 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.
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.
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
fork
Fork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...
of the web-based project-management and collaboration software
Forge (software)
A software forge is a collaboration platform allowing collaborative software development over the Internet. A forge platform aggregates a set of applications with integrated Web interfaces, and generally hosts multiple independent projects...
originally created for SourceForge
SourceForge
SourceForge Enterprise Edition is a collaborative revision control and software development management system. It provides a front-end to a range of software development lifecycle services and integrates with a number of free software / open source software applications .While originally itself...
, called Savane. GForge is licensed under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
.
GForge provides project hosting, version control (CVS and Subversion), 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
FusionForge
FusionForge is a free software application descendant of the forge originally created for running the SourceForge.net platform...
after GForge Group focused on GForge Advanced Server.
History
In 1999, VA Linux hired four developers, including Tim Perdue, to develop the SourceForge.netSourceForge.net
SourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. The website runs a version of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, forked from the last open-source version available...
service to encourage Open Source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
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 on November 17, 1999, the free software community
Free software community
The free-software community is an informal term that refers to the users and developers of free software as well as supporters of the free-software movement. The movement is sometimes referred to as the open-source software community or a subset thereof...
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 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. By 2001, the company's Linux hardware business had collapsed in the dotcom bust.
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. This prompted objections from open source community members. 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, Tim Perdue left VA, started GForge open source project based on the last publicly released version, 2.6, and merged the debian-sf fork, which had been maintained all along by Roland Mas and Christian Bayle into the project.
In February 2009, the Gforge GPL branch was forked to FusionForge
FusionForge
FusionForge is a free software application descendant of the forge originally created for running the SourceForge.net platform...
in a renewed effort by Roland Mas, Christian Bayle, and many 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 UMLUnified Modeling Language
Unified Modeling Language is a standardized general-purpose modeling language in the field of object-oriented software engineering. The standard is managed, and was created, by the Object Management Group...
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
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
but encrypted with ionCube
Ioncube
ionCube Ltd. is a software company based in the United Kingdom.ionCube was founded in 2002, and introduced tools to protect software written using the PHP programming language from being viewed, changed, and run on unlicensed computers...
to prevent people from reading the source code. It continues to use PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
as the database engine with optional Oracle
Oracle Database
The Oracle Database is an object-relational database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation....
and MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
support. Plug-ins for Eclipse IDE as well as Microsoft Visual Studio
Microsoft Visual Studio
Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment from Microsoft. It is used to develop console and graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all...
(only for customers and with no trial available) and other related tools were added to increase developer functionality. Workflow
Workflow
A workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, a group of persons, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms. Workflow may be seen as any abstraction of real work...
process management
Process management
Process management is the ensemble of activities of planning and monitoring the performance of a process. The term usually refers to the management of business processes and manufacturing processes...
to handle making use of the full software life cycle from inception, bug tracking to new release enhancement citation.
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.- LuaForgeLuaForgeLuaForge is an open source code repository and collaborative software development management system for programmers and projects related to the Lua programming language., there are more than five hundred projects in a software catalog of LuaForge....
- for the Lua community (free GForge 4.x). - RubyForgeRubyForgeRubyForge is a collaborative software development management system dedicated to projects related to the Ruby programming language. It was started in 2003 by Ruby Central in an effort to help the Ruby community by providing a home for open source Ruby projects....
- for the RubyRuby (programming language)Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto...
community (free GForge 4.x). - AVOIR Forge - for the African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources project (free GForge 4.x).
- CakeForge - for the CakePHPCakePHPCakePHP is an open source web application framework for producing web applications. It is written in PHP, modeled after the concepts of Ruby on Rails, and distributed under the MIT License.-History:...
community (free GForge 4.). - GForge.org - the self-hosting website of the GForge project (proprietary GForge AS 5.x).
- The Helix Community - for HelixHelix (project)Helix DNA is a project to produce software that can play audio and video media in various formats, aid in producing such media, and serve them over a network. It is intended as a largely free and open source digital media framework that runs on numerous operating systems and processors and was...
-related projects (unknown version). - JoomlaCode.org - for Joomla!Joomla!Joomla is a free and open source content management system for publishing content on the World Wide Web and intranets and a model–view–controller Web application framework that can also be used independently....
-related projects (proprietary GForge AS 5.x). - OCaml Forge - for OCamlObjective CamlOCaml , originally known as Objective Caml, is the main implementation of the Caml programming language, created by Xavier Leroy, Jérôme Vouillon, Damien Doligez, Didier Rémy and others in 1996...
-related projects (free GForge 4.x) - OSP - for open sourceOpen sourceThe term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
software projects (unknown version, doesn't look like GForge currently). - PgFoundry - for PostgreSQLPostgreSQLPostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
-related projects (free GForge 4.x). - ourproject.org - for ourproject.orgOurproject.orgOurProject.org is a web-based collaborative free content repository. It acts as a central location for the construction and maintenance of social/cultural/artistic projects, providing web space and tools, and focusing in free knowledge. It claims to extend the ideas and methodology of free...
-related projects (free GForge 4.x).
See also
- Computer-aided software engineeringComputer-aided software engineeringComputer-aided software engineering is the scientific application of a set of tools and methods to a software system which is meant to result in high-quality, defect-free, and maintainable software products...
(CASE) - Computer-supported collaborationComputer-supported collaborationComputer-supported collaboration research focuses on technology that affects groups, organizations, communities and societies, e.g., voice mail and text chat. It grew from cooperative work study of supporting people's work activities and working relationships...
- GNU SavannahGNU SavannahGNU Savannah is a project of the Free Software Foundation initiated by Loïc Dachary, which serves as a collaborative software development management system for Free Software projects. Savannah currently offers CVS, GNU arch, Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar, mailing list, web hosting, file...
- List of Rapid Application Development tools
- Toolkits for User InnovationToolkits for User InnovationToolkits for user innovation allow manufacturers to " abandon their attempts to understand user needs in detail in favor of transferring need-related aspects of product and service development to users along with an appropriate toolkit"...
- FusionForgeFusionForgeFusionForge is a free software application descendant of the forge originally created for running the SourceForge.net platform...