Google Launches SourceForge Competitor
David A. Utter | Staff Writer

Even though Google said it is not competing with the SourceForge
project hosting site, it's difficult to view it otherwise considering
Google's features and other services that can complement it.

The Project Hosting section of Google Code debuted yesterday during
Greg Stein's talk at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. Stein
works for Google as an open source engineer, and is known for his
role as chairman of the Apache Software Foundation.

Before the announcement, NewsForge's Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier and
Stein talked about Project Hosting. Stein said in the report that
Google just wanted to see what they can do with their infrastructure
to provide an alternative service for hosting open source projects.

Google is taking care not to overtly stomp on SourceForge with
Project Hosting, which will not have some features that are present
at SourceForge and similar sites.

That's a careful statement, in that Google doesn't say whether or
not it finds those particular features desirable. Stein goes on to
tell Brockmeier that Google was able to "cut out a lot of heavy
structure" in creating Project Hosting.