GNU Rates GitHub & SourceForge With "F" Ratings

Written by Michael Larabel in GNU on 25 April 2016 at 04:34 PM EDT. 46 Comments
GNU
The Free Software Foundation today announced their evaluations of major code repository-hosting services per the standards of the GNU Ethical Criteria for Code Repositories.

Ranked as part of the code repository platforms were GNU Savannah, GitLab, GitHub, and SourceForge.

The only code hosting platform to receive an A rating for "ethical hosting" was their own GNU Savannah platform. Receiving a "C" rating was GitLab due to having free JS code but not working with LibreJS and it encourages bad licensing practice.

Receiving the lowest possible grade, F, were both GitHub and SourceForge. Both GitHub and SourceForge were slammed for not having free JavaScript per the standards of the GNU/FSF and that key parts of the site don't work unless the non-free JS is used. GitHub and SourceForge were also slammed for some functionality not working in select countries.

You can read today's announcement at FSF.org or jump straight to the ethical criteria evaluation results.
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