Oct 17, 2016 

Projects of the Week, October 17, 2016

Here are the featured projects for the week, which appear on the front page of SourceForge.net:

Universal Media Server
Universal Media Server is a DLNA-compliant UPnP Media Server Universal Media Server that supports all major operating systems, with versions for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The program streams or transcodes many different media formats with little or no configuration. UMS is powered by MEncoder, FFmpeg, tsMuxeR, AviSynth, MediaInfo and more, which combine to offer support for a wide range of media formats Check out the list of media renderers here: http://www.universalmediaserver.com/about/
[ Download Universal Media Server ]


ReactOS
ReactOS is an open source effort to develop a quality operating system that is compatible with applications and drivers written for the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003).
[ Download ReactOS ]


Skim
Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file. Skim requires Mac OS X 10.6 or higher.
[ Download Skim ]


fldigi
Fldigi is a modem program for most of the digital modes used by radio amateurs today: CW, PSK, MFSK, RTTY, Hell, DominoEX, Olivia, and Throb are all supported. It can help calibrate a sound card to a time signal and do frequency measurement tests.
[ Download fldigi ]


GeoServer
GeoServer is an open source software server written in Java that allows users to share and edit geospatial data. Designed for interoperability, it publishes data from any major spatial data source using open standards: WMS, WFS, WCS, WPS and REST
[ Download GeoServer ]


MakuluLinux
Makululinux is Hybrid Based, provides a Sleek, Smooth and Stable user experience that is able to run on any computer from old to new, from netbooks to notebooks, desktops to server stations. Makulu provides software and codecs pre-installed on the OS, to provide an out of the box experience for the end user and his day to day tasks. Feel free to Join us in our Live Chat Room : http://www.chatzy.com/85165474454522
[ Download MakuluLinux ]


Pandora FMS: Flexible Monitoring System
Pandora FMS is an enterprise-ready monitoring solution that provides unparalleled flexibility for IT to address both immediate and unforeseen operational issues, including infrastructure and IT processes. It uniquely enables business and IT to adapt to changing needs through a flexible and rapid approach to IT and business deployment. Pandora FMS consolidates all the needs of modern monitoring (ITOM, APM, BAM) and provides status and performance metrics from different operating systems, virtual infrastructure (VMware, Hyper-V, XEN), Docker containers, applications, storage and hardware devices such as firewalls, proxies, databases, web servers or routers. It’s highly scalable (up to 2000 nodes with one single server), 100% web and with multi-tenant capabilities. It has a very flexible ACL system and several different graphical reports and user-defined control screens.
[ Download Pandora FMS: Flexible Monitoring System ]


CMU Sphinx
CMUSphinx is a speaker-independent large vocabulary continuous speech recognizer released under BSD style license. It is also a collection of open source tools and resources that allows researchers and developers to build speech recognition systems.
[ Download CMU Sphinx ]


thumbapps
We believe that free/open source software is enough, we don’t need pirated softwares on Windows. But most of these aren’t portables, or provided by PortableApps.com due to .NET dependencies, 64-bit etc. So we provide what’s missing here. Software publisher who wishes their portablized software taken down, can tip us through thumbapps.org or [email protected]. We promise to take it down without questions, but please be patient—we might not be able to respond promptly, but we eventually *will* …thanks for your patience, and sorry for being such a #naughty uploader 😉 Disclaimer. All softwares are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. YOU USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. THE AUTHOR WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR DATA LOSS, DAMAGES, AND LOSS OF PROFITS OR ANY OTHER KIND OF LOSS WHILE USING OR MISUSING THESE SOFTWARE.
[ Download thumbapps ]

Oct 14, 2016 

What It Takes to Be an Effective Community Manager

A community manager’s job is no walk in the park.

Constantly a community manager must face expectations from both sides of a project: the organization and the community, and often needs to find a compromise between these two. It’s a tough job and a crucial one, as without it a large chasm can form between organization and community which can eventually lead to project failure.

From the get-go a community manager can be overwhelmed by the task at hand, but being effective at this job can start with just one simple idea: communication.

Communication is the Key

We’ve previously pointed out how crucial communication is in open source, and for community managers it’s even more so. Communication should be their specialty, as their job primarily involves communicating to both the organization and the community in levels and ways that these parties can understand. Community managers must communicate the organization’s interests to the community while also delivering community feedback and concerns to the organization. They must be able to understand fully the perspective of each party to find a balance that benefits both.

Communication is also the key to building trust, which is essential when it comes to handling communities. Without trust, communities will not listen to, let alone be directed by a manager.

Communicating to build trust starts with listening. Listening to the community means finding out what motivates them, what they expect, what they like and don’t like about the project. Listening should be done not to give communities a false sense of hope or security, but with the intent of truly addressing their concerns and making sure that the community continues to develop and grow.

After listening, the community manager may then speak. And just as in listening, speaking to the community should not be done insincerely. It must be done with respect, honesty and openness, and whatever is promised must be delivered. Only then can trust truly be established.

With trust established, the community manager’s job eases significantly. This does not mean however, that all challenges will be avoided.

Importance of ROI

On the organization’s side, the challenge that a community manager can face is proving his value. In many cases, organizations fail to see the importance of community support. Instead of viewing community managers as allies in protecting the reputation of the organization, the organization can sometimes view them as disloyal. This misunderstanding can be prevented if a clear method of measuring community support success is in place even before the community manager takes on his duties. These metrics should be based on the organization’s specific goals and expectations while also considering the nature of the community. They must also be achievable and measurable within a given period of time. With these metrics in place, it becomes easier for community managers to prove their value and the value of the community program.

Giving Recognition Where It Is Due

People may have different reasons for participating in communities, but each one of them looks for some kind of affirmation at one point or another. This is another aspect of community management that must not be overlooked. Community managers must find ways to encourage and appreciate community members, especially those who are top contributors. Doing so strengthens the community and consequently, leads to the betterment of the project as a whole.

Managing open source communities can be challenging, but it can also be one of the most satisfying jobs there is. Witnessing communities composed of different minds coming together to share, collaborate and grow is a beautiful thing, and being there as a guide is not only a serious responsibility, but a great privilege as well.

Oct 11, 2016 

Introducing Multifactor Authentication on SourceForge

As part of our ongoing effort to improve security on SourceForge, we have added multifactor authentication. All project developers are encouraged to enable it for their account.

What is multifactor authentication? In short, it means providing something in addition to your password to log in. One of the most common forms of this is using an authenticator app on your phone, which will produce a 6-digit code specific to your account and the current time. When you log in, after entering your password you will be prompted to provide the current code. Backup codes are provided in case your phone is lost. Download or print your backup codes, otherwise you could risk not having any way back into your account.

multifactor-authentication

It’s easy to use, you can get started on your account preferences page. All you’ll need to do is install an authenticator app on your phone and use it to scan a QR code to set it up. Then whenever you log in, just use the app to get the current code. See the multifactor authentication documentation for more info, including how to use it for things like committing code and SFTP.

Future enhancements that we are looking at include alternate authentication with FIDO U2F hardware keys, and showing admins of a project whether other developers have multifactor authentication enabled.

Oct 10, 2016 

Projects of the Week, October 10, 2016

Here are the featured projects for the week, which appear on the front page of SourceForge.net:

The FreeType Project
FreeType is written in C. It is designed to be small, efficient, and highly customizable while capable of producing high-quality output (glyph images) of most vector and bitmap font formats for digital typography. FreeType is a freely available and portable software library to render fonts.
[ Download The FreeType Project ]


gnuplot
A famous scientific plotting package, features include 2D and 3D plotting, a huge number of output formats, interactive input or script-driven options, and a large set of scripted examples.
[ Download gnuplot ]


Double Commander
Double Commander is a cross platform open source file manager with two panels side by side. It is inspired by Total Commander and features some new ideas.
[ Download Double Commander ]


NAPS2 (Not Another PDF Scanner 2)
Visit NAPS2’s home page at www.naps2.com. NAPS2 is a document scanning application with a focus on simplicity and ease of use. Scan your documents from WIA- and TWAIN-compatible scanners, organize the pages as you like, and save them as PDF, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, and other file formats. Requires .NET Framework 4.0 or higher. NAPS2 is currently available in over 30 different languages. Want to see NAPS2 in your preferred language? Help translate! See the wiki for more details. This is a fork of the NAPS project with many improvements.
[ Download NAPS2 (Not Another PDF Scanner 2) ]


Remix OS Player
Android has a wide range of games available on the Play Store all of which can be played on Remix OS, such as or including Clash Royale, Pokémon Go, and Vainglory on their PCs. For the more dedicated gamer, Remix OS also includes a key mapping tool that allows Android games with touch control schemes to be played more effectively with keyboard and mouse. Remix OS Player is first available for Windows PCs, with Mac support coming in future. Installation only requires the user to download an .exe file to run Remix OS directly from their desktop. Remix OS Player is the fastest and most optimized Android emulator on the market and is based on Google’s own Android Studio. Unlike Android Studio and other emulators, Remix OS Player will let Android developers optimize their apps for the Android PC/Chrome OS environment because of its mouse and multiple window support.
[ Download Remix OS Player ]


arch-openrc
OpenRC, eudev and no-systemd packages for Arch Linux (and, possibly, derivatives). For migrating from existing systemd installations, read the guide at http://systemd-free.org, which currently uses the [openrc-eudev] repository and contains both openrc and nosystemd packages. Go to arch-openrc for a clean OpenRC installation with the provided ISO and [arch-openrc] repository. Use the [arch-nosystemd] repository for completely systemd-free installations. Links ~~~~~ Github: https://github.com/cromerc/arch-nosystemd https://github.com/cromerc/arch-openrc Installation guide: http://systemd-free.org/install.php
[ Download arch-openrc ]


berryboot
Berryboot is a simple operating system installer and boot selection screen for ARM devices such as the Raspberry Pi and Cubieboard. It allows you to put multiple Linux distribution on a single SD card.
[ Download berryboot ]

iDempiere
iDempiere = OSGi + ADempiere iDempiere Business Suite ERP/CRM/SCM done the community way. Focus is on the Community that includes Subject Matter Specialists, Implementors and End-Users. iDempiere is based on original Compiere/Adempiere plus a new architecture to use state-of-the-art technologies like OSGi, Buckminster, zk.
[ Download iDempiere ]


JasperReports Library
JasperReports Library, the world’s most popular open source business intelligence and reporting engine and JasperReports Server, the most popular open source interactive report server built-on JasperReports Library
[ Download JasperReports Library ]

Oct 7, 2016 

Should You Fight the Freeloaders?

When you create something that’s labelled “free” you’re bound to have freeloaders. It’s unavoidable since the mere mention of “free”- even if it’s “free as in free speech”- will attract these people. But that doesn’t mean you can do nothing about them, or that they are inherently bad. When it comes to open source software, that is definitely not the case.

Freeloaders and Free Software

In the world of open source software, freeloaders are viewed negatively more often than not. They’ve developed a reputation of being un-paying, ungrateful users who rarely if ever contribute anything useful or meaningful. But despite this nasty reputation, freeloaders do serve a purpose when it comes to open source software.

Software Usage

Though freeloaders essentially do nothing but use a piece of software, that act in itself is already an advantage for developers. Having plenty of freeloaders means having plenty of users, which basically signifies that you’re doing something right. If you’re making changes to the software, these users can tell you a great deal about how well these changes are working for the software or not.

Potential Contributors

Freeloaders are a good sign that your software is doing well at the moment. But they can also be beneficial in the future. For every thousand of these so-called freeloaders, a few hundred will most likely become contributors in the long run. It’s a natural progression that occurs especially when your software continues to work well and retains loyal users.

Avoiding the Danger

But while freeloaders are a good indicator or project success and may become contributors in the future, there is a danger to having them. The danger is if all your users are freeloaders and none of them show signs of evolving into contributors. This was what led to the shutting down of Open Sourced Vulnerability Database (OSVDB), which had plenty of users but not enough of them giving back.

You shouldn’t fight off the freeloaders, but you should definitely be careful that they aren’t all the users that you have or that freeloaders are all they’re ever going to be. Make it easy for them to transition from freeloaders to contributors by making the process of contributing easy. That means making your software extremely easy to build and test, and providing clear avenues for them to make changes and other contributions.

Having freeloaders is a good start to establishing a solid base of users and later, contributors. In this sense, they are essential to attaining project success and therefore must not be shunned but nurtured and encouraged to contribute.

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