Saddened to learn that SourceForge has gone from excellent host and distributor of open source software projects to a bottom feeding piece of shit that peddles malware. Of course they give it a nicer name, like “researchware” or adware, etc. Even worse is that some of their more popular projects have even opted into this garbage, such as the FileZilla SFTP/FTP/FTPS client. Want more? Yep, it doesn’t end there. They are also removing control of existing projects from the original developers, adding their malware in, and continuing to distribute it as if nothing had happened.
You might expect to see news of this on slashdot, but apparently slashdot and Source Forge are owned by the same entity, so any stories related to this are being killed by the admins. So find a new tech news site too while you’re at it.
Some of the garbage FileZilla has begun installing, for example, includes Premier Opinion, Yahoo Search, random browser extensions for Chrome, Safari and Firefox, etc.
Here’s the back story on SourceForge’s voyage into darkness:
Some info on how to remove Premier Opinion specifically:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7007971#Malware
Article on avoiding the use of SourceForge:
http://www.howtogeek.com/218764/warning-don’t-download-software-from-sourceforge-if-you-can-help-it/
Slashdot burying stories about this:
http://danluu.com/slashdot-sourceforge/