&gt; <i>The UI wasn&#x27;t great but how many reliable alternatives were there at the time?</i><p>None. But when Github came around, there were also no reliable alternatives at the time (other than google code which sucked as well) and it was still a thousand times better than everything else.<p>Sourceforge was never &quot;amazing&quot;. It was never &quot;great&quot;. It used to be decent and the only player in the game. When Github came around, it quickly lost both those attributes.<p>I don&#x27;t know why people fondly remember the &quot;old sourceforge days&quot; - I remember those days and they sucked.<p>Don&#x27;t let the lack of competition forgive how bad something is.