I have a cunning plan, suh.

[Brendan]

A site dedicated to reviewing SourceForge.net software.

Since the quality of software on SourceForge ranges from professional to dire it would be nice to have a single site split up ionto sections reviewing the stuff. Anything goes, you have a huge repository of free stuff to rate. You could even have a section on how well written the code was.

Damn, if only I wasn't so lazy between the hours of 5pm and 8:30am.

[Fugitive]

That might overlap with freshmeat (http://freshmeat.net) a bit too much, though they don't really sell the ratings angle as their primary focus.

People don't even seem all that eager to comment on projects there, so it might be difficult to drum up enough support for a new site to reach that critical mass of having enough to be useful.

[Brendan]

It's still difficult to find anything interesting on Freshmeat. By focusing on fewer programs and providing good quality reviews I think you could tap a large market out there. Instead of thirty word reviews on every single proxy server out there, find the best one or two and compare it to commercial products etc.

[Chris Nahr]

SF.net already has a popularity ranking that makes the best projects pretty obvious. I think it would be more worthwhile to point out the odd overlooked gem, if there is such a thing.

[Brendan]

I personally prefer to avoid the 10 000 monkeys bashing away at their keyboard approach which seems to be so popular on the web these days.

I prefer a more professional approach to reviews in which the author can be held accountable and the ratings aren't influenced by the "OMFG xxxxxx Roxxxooorrrs!!!11111!!!!!!lol" brigade. If the recent Digg encryption key DOS fiasco has proven anything it is that slavish devotees of the Web2.01a craze are largely slobbering rejects.

[Chris Nahr]

Look, I don't know what your elite monocled beret-wearing ideas of open source quality are, but ten thousand people downloading a project is a pretty good indication that it actually works and meets some purpose...

[Brendan]

Look, I don't know what your elite monocled beret-wearing ideas of open source quality are, but ten thousand people downloading a project is a pretty good indication that it actually works and meets some purpose...

Whoa, easy there tiger. Nowhere in there did I bash opensource software.

I think the issue here is that we have different opinions of what it means to review something. To you 6/10 is a review. To me a description of strengths and weaknesses, what features are included and what are left out, how easy is it to incorporate their code into yours and how it stacks up against commercial software, etc is a review. Try to find these things out by just seeing "10 000 people have downloaded this with an average score of 6/10" or sifting through 398 comments. You possess l337er skillz than me if you can do this in the time it takes to read a good 3 page review.

[Chris Nahr]

Well, in that case there's the issue of active OSS projects being updated very frequently. Your in-depth three-page review is likely obsolete a month after publication. Who's going to keep them up-to-date?

Meanwhile, you could simply download an interesting project and try it on your own system. That does take time but you'll know for sure whether the program works with YOUR data and caters to YOUR special needs that a review likely won't cover.

[Brendan]

Congratulations, I hope you're happy. You crushed my dream underfoot. Twas just a wee little thing too.

[Chris Nahr]

I cackle wickedly as I sip my brandy made from distilled babies and contemplate which little old lady to push in front of a truck today!

[Fugitive]

Everything Else: Crushing Your Dreams Underfoot Since 2002.