Sourceforge reintroduces persistent login cookies
Sourceforge has reintroduced persistent login cookies. Here’s the bug request I submitted about this, a long time ago.
The thing is, I don’t really care much anymore. I’ve moved my open-source projects off Sourceforge onto Google Code. I am about 10x more productive there.
This lesson can be applied to pretty much everything on the web these days. Make it even the slightest bit hard to use your service, and people will use what’s easy instead. (Sourceforge’s user interface is more than slightly hard to use.)
The New York Times is the same way for me. They want me to log in to read the news stories. They say it’s free, and I say ok, then why do I need an account? Forget it.
Am I selfish? Do I want something for nothing? Am I lazy and impatient beyond imagining? Yes.
Am I typical? Yes.
There are far better alternatives to SourceForge. There are not better alternatives to the NYT. What are you going to do, read the local rag? haha!
scott
27 Feb 09 at 6:15 pm
I actually think that online newspapers should be charging for their content. Giving it away free and supporting it with ads sends the wrong message and is proving to be a disastrous business strategy. And after they all go out of business, we’ll suddenly realize how important real, physical local newspapers are to a free society.
If the NYT charged for an account, that’d be different. I realize this is self-contradictory, but I believe I’d be more willing to get an account if they charged me for it and didn’t give away any content (except maybe for teasers) free.
Am I irrational? Yes… I’m still typical!
Xaprb
1 Mar 09 at 11:19 pm