In a move that must surely strike at the very core of open source, FOSS, and the heart of GNU crusader Richard Stallman, SourceForge has now blocked all access from by countries on the U.S. 'Foreign Assets Control sanction list'.

Sourceforge ignored users from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria saying that it has to deal with USA laws. USA has very hard relationships with those countries, that is why open source, free software, hackers and people loving freedom must suffer, and Sourceforge is not against that.

Source Forge has banned downloads from Syria, Iran, Sudan, Cuba, and North Korea. Funny enough, the decision came after US Secretary of State speech on Internet's freedom.
In Syria, the Open Source community is upset and felt that the decision is against principles of software freedom.

"Sourceforge just became the latest US-based entity to censor Syria along with five other countries. Despite being one of the leading proponents of Free Software, Sourceforge has succumbed to pressure from the US government to deny access to its products to millions of people.

SourceForge.net (part of SourceForge, Inc., NASDAQ: LNUX), the world’s largest web site for open source development and distribution, today launched an online marketplace for technology professionals to buy and sell service and support for open source software.

Since 1999, SourceForge has the 'go to place' for all open source downloads, but in the last couple of years, Google Code has put up a bit of challenge. Remember also for a while there was this constant thread in media about how SourceForge had 100,000 project, though most had been abandoned.

With the Obama Administration gutting NASA's return to the Moon program, we need to look to private industry to lead the way in returning humans to space. Open source could be the ticket to get us there better, faster and cheaper

SourceForge has been running a community-driven awards process over the last month, trying to discover the top open-source projects. On Friday, the winners were announced. The ones selected say a lot about those who frequent SourceForge. But before I get into that, here are the winners:

SourceForge, Inc., the leader in community-driven media and e-commerce, today announced the finalists of its second annual SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards. The awards recognize open source projects which not only have the most supportive community following, but also those which the SourceForge.net community's members believe are built with the highest quality, productivity and ingenuity.