FreeGameDev • Topic - berliOS will be closed : how many game project in danger?

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berliOS will be closed : how many game project in danger?

Posted: 04 Oct 2011, 11:21

by DarkBaboon

I learned today that BerliOS will be closed at the end of the year, after 10 years of loyal service. Nearly 4700 projects were launched by this site, including many free open source games. Among his games there was PlanetPenguin Racer Lincity-NG, netpanzer Battle of Antargis, SuperTux, SuperTuxKart, Warzone 2100, Oolite, some of its games are already hosted elsewhere, but some that are no longer maintained, may disappear from the world of free software.

Source of the bad news : http://developer.berlios.de/forum/forum.php?forum_id=37450

Re: berliOS will be closed : how many game project in danger

Posted: 04 Oct 2011, 11:34

by Knitter

Yeah, I got their e-mail with the notice that the servers were going down at the end of the year. The application I developed for my course's final project is there, along with some other projects, but I stopped using it after SF started getting updates, and since the news about BerliOS hacked servers I moved my projects out. Still it was nice to have a hosting like that in this side of the atlantic (Europe).

Even if they close most of the services, couldn't they keep a download server so that we could just download all the assets from a project (a svn/cvs/git export file, packaged web files, mysql dumps, etc). It can easily be made automatic and would allow anyone to move projects out of their servers, that would be nice. But I guess they won't allow for that.

Re: berliOS will be closed : how many game project in danger

Posted: 04 Oct 2011, 11:48

by charlie

I like the idea of ForgePlucker:
http://home.gna.org/forgeplucker/

"The ForgePlucker project aims to produce tools to capture and back up project state from commonly used forge systems (open-source hosting sites). Bad architectural decisions in early forge systems have made their descendants into (unintentional) data jails; ForgePlucker will break our projects free."

Perhaps we should have a dig and see which game projects need rescuing?

Re: berliOS will be closed : how many game project in danger

Posted: 04 Oct 2011, 18:40

by hc

A shame...guess government grants ran out and Fraunhofer(*) decided they couldn't gain on it anymore.
After all berlios.de not berlios.org
(*) research company known from mp3 patent

To name some nameful ones:
LinCityNG
SuperTux
Oolite
Adonthell

And they'll probably eliminate my code snippets as well...and I haven't received a mail at all.

Well, mass extinction fits: I guess popular/active/fit projects will survive but a lot will stay behind.
Even not so popular or inactive projects are creative products someone may find useful and someone put effort into.
Kind of reminds me of a old library burning down in germany/.de destroying original unique classic works.

Re: berliOS will be closed : how many game project in danger

Posted: 05 Oct 2011, 01:47

by charlie

Battle for Antargis:
http://antargis.berlios.de/

Re: berliOS will be closed : how many game project in danger

Posted: 05 Oct 2011, 09:54

by L

Tried downloading battle for antargis, but my already slow download completly reset on me. :X

Re: berliOS will be closed : how many game project in danger

Posted: 12 Oct 2011, 11:41

by KIAaze

I managed to download the antargis tarball, but the svn checkout does not seem to work.

Re: berliOS will be closed : how many game project in danger

Posted: 12 Oct 2011, 20:29

by farcodev

damn, after FARC have been kicked out from Sourceforge, BerliOS was one of the possible option to host the project, i'm happy to haven't retained that option o.O

Re: berliOS will be closed : how many game project in danger

Posted: 30 Oct 2011, 20:45

by Carver413

damn, after FARC have been kicked out from Sourceforge, BerliOS was one of the possible option to host the project, i'm happy to haven't retained that option o.O

so what was it that got you kicked out of source forge. I set up an acount there but after hearing what they did to you I have been reluctant to do any more.

Re: berliOS will be closed : how many game project in danger

Posted: 04 Dec 2011, 07:37

by farcodev

Carver413 {l Wrote}:so what was it that got you kicked out of source forge. I set up an acount there but after hearing what they did to you I have been reluctant to do any more.

Because of a long and ancient story w/ an asset problem. Someone complained about a picture for about 5 years and finally SF kicked me up.

SF isn't bad by itself but has curious methods

Re: berliOS will be closed : how many game project in danger

Posted: 27 Dec 2011, 05:25

by charlie

In case anybody was worried about this, Berlios now will remain online and has a foundation to back it.

http://developer.berlios.de/forum/forum ... m_id=37533

www.berlios.de {l Wrote}:BerliOS continues – non-profit association is founded

Dear BerliOS developers and users,

Since announcing that Fraunhofer FOKUS is forced to discontinue to operate BerliOS we have received numerous rescue proposals. Today, we are pleased to announce that the BerliOS platform can continue to exist. Still in November 2011 a non-profit association will be founded, whose aim is the operation and further development of the BerliOS platform.

The association shall be operated by volunteers that are interested in a free platform and whish that important basic functions of BerliOS as a hosting portal for OSS-projects remain alive. The core of BerliOS (developer.berlios.de) is not limited and shall be operated by the association in its present form.

Become a member of the club, take responsibility for BerliOS and donate your performance. You'll find all information on the foundation of the association on the mailing list: https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listin ... ios-verein.

Fraunhofer FOKUS
http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de

Re: berliOS will be closed : how many game project in danger

Posted: 02 Jan 2012, 10:47

by hc

LOL, today I woke up, worried that I forgot to secure my code-snippets and hastily downloaded them happy berlios still left their servers online. Only after securing snippets I noticed that news on berlios. And then I just came back here to bring the good news - just to see charlie already posted the good news.

I think this is very good news. As a non-profit foundation berlios may last longer after all.
When it survives the near future it may last "forever" as well.
Could make it a better bet than github or sourceforge.

Great!