Dont Download Software From Source. Forge If You Can Help ItSource. Forge are sic abusing the trust that we and our users had put into their service in the past, according to the GIMP project. Since 2. 01. 3, Source. Forge has been bundling junkware along with their installers sometimes without a developers permission. Dont download software from Source. Forge if you can help it. Developer of plugins including PhotoGraphic Edges, Mystical Lighting, Mystical Tint Tone and Color, AutoEye, and Dreamsuite Series. Wacom Download Bundled Software' title='Wacom Download Bundled Software' />USGS Earthquake Hazards Program, responsible for monitoring, reporting, and researching earthquakes and earthquake hazards. Many open source projects now host their installers elsewhere, and the versions on Source. Forge may include junkware. If you absolutely have to download something from Source. Forge, be extra careful. Update Since the writing of this article, Source. Forge has been sold to a new company that stopped the Dev. Share program discussed in this article. Were leaving this article here for historical reference, but it has since stopped these shady practices. Yes, Source. Forge Is One of the Bad Download Websites. Source. Forge built up a lot of goodwill in the past, being a centralized place for downloading open source software and hosting software repositories. Over the years, more projects have moved to other repository hosting services like Git. Hub. In 2. 01. 2, Dice Holdings purchased Source. Forge and Slashdot from Geeknet. In 2. 01. 3, Source. Forge enabled a feature named Dev. Share. Dev. Share is an opt in feature developers can enable for their own projects. Download Software Football Manager 2013 Fmrte License Key. If a developer enables this feature, youll download their software from Source. Forge to find that its been wrapped in Source. Forges own installer, which pushes intrusive junkware onto your system. Source. Forge and developers make money by foisting this software on you, just as practically every other download site and freeware distributor does on Windows. Dev. Share does require a project owner opt in to enable this feature on their project, although theyre now hosting a variety of projects bundled with junkware against the wishes of their developers. Some projects have chosen to jump onboard the Dev. Share train on their own, and thats their own choice. FIle. Zilla was an early participant, and File. Zillas developer responded to concerns This is intentional. The installer does not install any spyware and clearly offers you a choice whether to install the offered software. Chrome blocked us from downloading File. Zilla from Source. Forges website, warning that it may harm your browsing experience. Source. Forge and GIMPGIMP is a popular open source image editor its basically the open source communitys answer to Photoshop. In 2. 01. 3, GIMPs developers pulled the GIMP Windows downloads from Source. Forge. Source. Forge was full of misleading advertisements masquerading as Download buttons something thats a problem all over the web. Source. Forge then rolled out its own Windows installer filled with junkware, and that was the straw that broke the camels back. In response, the GIMP project abandoned Source. Cyberlink Youcam Full Version Free Download For Windows 7 64 Bit here. Forge and began hosting their downloads elsewhere. In 2. 01. 5, Source. Forge pushed back. Considering the old GIMP account on Source. Forge abandoned, they took control over it, locking out the original maintainer. They then put GIMP downloads back up on Source. Forge, wrapped in Source. Forges own junkware filled installer. If youre downloading GIMP from Source. Forge, youre getting a version filled with junkware, one that GIMPs developers dont want you to use. Source. Forge said they were providing a valuable service to people looking to download open source software, but GIMPs developers strongly disagree. After a lot of negative press, Source. Forge later changed their stance. Chrome Adobe Reader Plugin Not Installed Or Enabled Energy. At this time, we present third party offers only with a few projects where it is explicitly approved by the project developer, Source. Forge wrote in a statement. Given their past actions and the at this time wording in their statement, wed recommend you steer clear of Source. Forge anyway. They no longer deserve the trust of the open source community. Its Not Just the GIMPOther developers didnt actually choose to enable Dev. Share. GIMP is currently listed as brought to you by sf editor. Source. Forge. Click through to sf editor. Source. Forge itself, from Audacity and Open. Office to Firefox. Click through to a projects official website and youll find actual download links. For example, Audacitys homepage redirects you to FOSSHUB to download Audacity, not Source. Forge. But searching for Audacity on Google still brings up the Source. Forge page as the top result. Although Source. Forge may no longer be bundling these applications with junkware for the moment, the Source. Forge website is still full of misleading advertisements that point you to installers full of junkware. Avoid Source. Forge Downloads. Avoid using Source. Forge to download software. Even if it comes up first in a Google search, skip Source. Forge and head to the software projects official download page. Follow the links to download the program from somewhere else theres a good chance the project has moved away from Source. Forge and offers clean download links elsewhere. Or, better yet, skip all the usual downloading and install the most useful applications using Ninite. Ninite is the only safe centralized Windows freeware download site weve found. If you do have to download from Source. Forge, be careful to avoid the downloads that include the Source. Forge installer. Go out of your way to grab the direct downloads instead. And, by the way, Source. Forge is now bundling junkware with their Mac downloads too just like Download. Even Mac users arent safe, although we havent seen Dev. Share extended to Linux PCs just yet. Everyone should avoid Source. Forge downloads, whether youre running Windows or not. In our testing, weve found that Source. Forges downloader behaves more nicely in a virtual machine. If you want to see what it actually does, be sure to test it in a real Windows system on a physical machine, not a virtual machine. This is the same sort of behavior that malicious applications are increasingly using to avoid detection and analysis.