SourceForge and our sister site, Slashdot, have long served as go-to places for developers and other IT pros looking to learn more about what’s going on in tech. After we noticed an uptick in demand for information on business intelligence, we launched a site called SlashBI which provided news and expert commentary on that fast-growing segment. Recent articles have covered everything from federal agencies’ need for more data analysts, to the Apple iPad’s effect on business intelligence vendors, to best practices for managing analytics applications within the enterprise.  

Now, we’re complementing SlashBI with SlashCloud, dedicated to the latest information about cloud computing.

The cloud is, well, something of a cloudy concept for some people. Companies routinely fight over their definition of it (think Oracle and Salesforce). Customers question whether they need it. SlashCloud will present a clearer picture of the cloud via a mix of news and commentary from a roster of content experts, business leaders, and analysts. Our launch stories include an interview with Salesforce EVP and former Heroku CEO Byron Sebastian, a comparison of Google Drive to other cloud-storage options, and a call for businesses to embrace the cloud on its own terms.

SlashCloud is the next in our series of verticals dedicated to specific technologies. Please take a look, and let us know what you think. You can also visit the SlashCloud Facebook and Google+ pages, follow the site on Twitter, and sign up for the weekly newsletter.

–Rich

(Cloud image from Shutterstock)

Last week I spoke briefly with Jürgen Schmidt about the Apache OpenOffice 3.4 release, and he was able to give us a little insight into what was involved in getting this release out, and what’s coming in future versions. (Official Release Announcement)

SourceForge is very proud to have a small part in the this release, as we’re helping out with the download mirroring, and we’re also hosting the Extensions sites.

I’ve got one more video in the works, which hopefully I’ll have done later this week. Can you tell we’re geeked about OpenOffice?

SourceForge congratulates Apache OpenOffice on the release Apache OpenOffice 3.4, the first release to carry the Apache name. (Official Release Announcement)

Apache OpenOffice has a number of exciting new features, but the main effort on this release has gone into replacing or rewriting any components that were not compliant with the Apache license.

The video below covers some of the new features. I’ve got another video in the works covering more of the new features, so don’t think that this is all that’s in there.

SourceForge is very proud to host the Templates and Extensions sites, as well as helping out with the distribution of the main release.
We wish OpenOffice enormous success with their new release, and we’re proud to have a small part in that.

Stay tuned for two more videos. I was able to interview Jürgen Schmidt, the Apache OpenOffice release manager, last week, and we talked some about what was involved in getting this release out. And, as I mentioned above, I have another video in the works with some of the other new features.

This week’s projects span the range of media, games, and business applications, as in many weeks. We continue to be impressed at the craft and passion that goes into creating these and other free software applications. Thanks for being part of the SourceForge community!

• UMPlayer

  UMPlayer is a cross-platform multimedia player supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It boasts many advanced features such as built-in subtitle search and YouTube player.

• SugarCRM - commercial open source CRM

  A complete CRM system for businesses of all sizes. Core CRM functionality includes sales automation, marketing campaigns, support cases, project mgmt, calendaring and more. Built in PHP, supports MySQL and SQL Server.

• Whited00r

  Speed up your old iOS device with Whited00r.
  Available on:
  iPhone 2G
  iPhone 3G
  iPod Touch 1G
  iPod Touch 2G (MB model only)

• Openbravo ERP

  Openbravo 3, the agile ERP, is a modular, ready to use, 100% web-based open source business management system written in Java, that automates all of the core business processes for small and mid-sized companies.

• pseint

  PSeInt is a pseudo-code interepreter for spanish-speaking programming students. Its main porpouse is to be a tool for learning and understanding the basic concepts about programming and aplying them with an easy understanding spanish pseudocode.

• AkelPad

  A simple notepad-like text editor with many features. It is designed to be a small and fast.

• Mega Mario

  Mega Mario is a Super Mario Bros. 1 clone. It features everything the original features - with better graphics, higher resolution, smoother movement and new levels. The story of Mario and Luigi continues, in old-school style. Also visit the official HP.

• Blat - Windows Command Line SMTP Mailer

  Blat - A Windows (32 & 64 bit) command line SMTP mailer. Use it to automatically eMail logs, the contents of a html FORM, or whatever else you need to send.

• TeXstudio - A LaTeX Editor

  TeXstudio, previously TexMakerX, is a platform-independent LaTeX editor with included PDF viewer. It provides modern features like interactive spell/syntax checking, code folding, extended text navigation, code completion and syntax highlighting.

SourceForge just a forge? Not quite, not anymore. SourceForge is investing time and resources to help open source projects to grow, and we do that through numerous ways. Take our recent collaboration with one of the most famous open source projects: the OpenOffice project, now incubated at the Apache Software Foundation.

SourceForge helps the Apache OpenOffice by serving downloads for the Extensions and the Templates sites, as well as the shortly upcoming Apache OpenOffice 3.4 Release.

Read below to learn more about how we pursue our mission to become the most trusted source for Open Source Software by doing, and what lessons we learned from working with the Apache Way.

Let’s start with a little background information about OpenOffice.

In the beginning it was StarOffice

Actually very few people know that OpenOffice was one of the first productivity suites around. In fact everything started back in 1984 when a company called StarDivision started to develop StarOffice. A few years later, in 1999, Sun Microsystems bought StarDivision, after which Sun Microsystems, just ten years ago started to distribute a version of it as open source software: OpenOffice.org was born.

Ten years later, Sun Microsystems was in turn acquired by Oracle, and in June 2011 contributed the suite, the trademarks and the domains to the Apache Incubator.

SourceForge’s Mission and What we do for the Apache OpenOffice Incubator

Our Mission is changed: it’s no longer just about providing a forge, we now ask ourselves what we can do for open source. The best way we found to serve open source projects is actually understand their needs, and help them to fulfill those needs.

In the Apache OpenOffice Podling case, we thought we could help by reengineering and restoring the Extensions and the Templates websites. As part of the incubation process at Apache, Oracle - former sponsor and host of the OpenOffice project - was progressively migrating services and websites under the Apache umbrella. In the process some of these services were momentarily discontinued or - like for the Extensions and Templates sites - moved to temporary locations which were unable to serve those services with the previous level of service.

Given the fact that a relevant number of services and websites were to be migrated, we stepped into the process to take care of two websites, providing OpenOffice users with a centralized access to important resources, like Extensions and Templates. We needed to reengineer both Drupal platforms, upgrade the supported PHP version and instruct the authentication system to serve over 40,000 users, formerly authenticated by the Oracle authentication server.

Both websites are now fully operational, restored and well supported at SourceForge at the following addresses: Extensions and Templates. In collaboration with the Podling Project Management Committee (PPMC) we kept Extensions’ and Templates’ users informed about all changes, as well as we finally provided them with stats about top downloads, geographies and operating systems.

It might worthwhile to mention that SourceForge is not locking in Apache OpenOffice in any manner. In fact all Drupal configurations and applications are available to the PPMC, and the ‘neighborhoods’ - def - serving those downloads are fully open source and available at http://sourceforge.net/p/allura.

As a matter of fact we serve the Apache OpenOffice project and everyone else keeping them out of ‘data jails‘ as Eric Raymond called them.

You can put data (the source code revision history, mailing list address lists, bug reports) into them, but getting a complete snapshot of that data back out often ranges from painful to impossible.

At SourceForge we provide a fully open source platform that make it possible for everyone to easily migrate data and projects. SourceForge is not just about free and open source software, but it’s about freedom of choice, and we’ll make sure you’ll keep using both our forge and directory by helping your project to grow.

Takeaways from the collaboration and the future ahead.

In the collaboration process we gained Apache OpenOffice’s trust – which is expressed in the Apache OpenOffice Blog entry about the project timeline as well as in Apache OpenOffice mentor’s appreciative words. Actually the partnership has been recently extended to solve another challenging issues: help Apache to manage the expected OpenOffice downloads’ peaks for the upcoming new release.

We let facts speak for themselves, and we are improving our ability to partner with well recognized open source players, the Apache Software Foundation, not very differently from what we have done for BerliOS or we’ll do for others in the future.

For serving our open source constituencies - developers and users - we allocate two engineering teams to provide a better dev experience, and an easy way to find open source software. Our mission has changed, and we are putting more of our energy into becoming The Most Trusted Partner for Open Source.

We love that people have started to notice that.

Thanks.

I would like to take the opportunity here to thank Ross Gardler, who mentored the SourceForge teams through the collaboration process, Rob Weir for his inputs and support, and Gavin McDonald and the whole Apache Infrastructure team, who provided us with all necessary information for a successful migration.

It is also appropriate to give credit here to our SiteOp team, especially Jacob Moorman, Wayne Witzel and Dave Brondsema, for enabling our Allura open source forge to deliver on performance and the overall project delivery. Our contractor Antonio De Marco, who turned all our specifications in a working platform.
Last but not least, I wish to say thanks to Andrea Pescetti, who provided us with all details about how the Apache OpenOffice Extensions & Templates websites work.

Roberto Galoppini, SourceForge Business Development Director and now Apache Open Office committer and PPMC member.