It just occurred to me that when I’m looking for an alternative[*] for a proprietary piece of software and find a number of open source/free software versions that are similar in features I usually pick the one that’s hosted at sourceforge.net.

“But why?”, you ask, “why is that a criteria for selection?”.

Well it’s quite simple really. I’ve learned that there are a number of advantages to the “one stop open source shopping” in the sourceforge shop. (Now try repeating that last sentence 3 times in a row without tripping your tongue.)

And here they are, compiled neatly into a little list for your convenience:

• It’s free free free!
• You can get update notifications by email if new versions are released, which is neat if you like your binaries nice and fresh, you geek.
• A single user account gives you access to the support and bug tracking forums of most of the projects.
• Support items can be tracked as well by email, which is nice, so you get a notification when the that bug you ran into gets fixed.

[*] OS software isn’t really an alternative anymore in my case these days, it’s actually my first option in a lot of cases. Why bother paying for a commercial closed source product if you can get equally good stuff for free?

Beats me!