GoogleCode announces removal of file download feature for hosted projects

[40hz]

Just a heads up for anybody hosting a project on GoogleCode - Google is phasing out direct file downloads from the GoogleCode service.


Here's the official announcement from Google:

A Change to Google Code Download Service

Project Hosting on Google Code provides a free collaborative development environment for open source projects. Each project comes with its own member controls, Subversion/Mercurial/Git repository, issue tracker, wiki pages, and downloads service.

Downloads were implemented by Project Hosting on Google Code to enable open source projects to make their files available for public download. Unfortunately, downloads have become a source of abuse with a significant increase in incidents recently. Due to this increasing misuse of the service and a desire to keep our community safe and secure, we are deprecating downloads.

Starting today, existing projects that do not have any downloads and all new projects will not have the ability to create downloads. Existing projects with downloads will see no visible changes until January 14, 2014 and will no longer have the ability to create new downloads starting on January 15, 2014.  All existing downloads in these projects will continue to be accessible for the foreseeable future.

If your project is using downloads to host and distribute files and has a need to periodically create new downloads, we recommend you move your downloads to an alternate service like Google Drive before January 15, 2014. If you choose to move your files to Google Drive, check out our help article.

By Google Project Hosting

[wraith808]

How is google drive any different?  Are the abuses then space related?  That's the only difference I can see.

Even better yet, a better way to solve the problem?  Move to Github or SourceForge (or CodePlex even).  I'm becoming less and less enamored of Google...

[Stoic Joker]

How is google drive any different?  Are the abuses then space related?  That's the only difference I can see.

-wraith808 (May 24, 2013, 10:25 AM)

That was my first question as well. They supposedly have acres of servers for storage so re-provisioning a few here or there can't be that big a deal. But then again they're really vague about the nature of the infractions that are so rampant...which makes me wonder what they're hiding not saying.

I'm pretty much straight Bing these days ... But still occasionally use Google (accidently) out of reflex. Rest of their service I won't touch with a 10' pole.

[wraith808]

Yeah... I've been thinking seriously about transitioning from gmail.  But then I look at the number of messages I have in it, and just continue onward...

[Jibz]

I would guess it is because people are hosting files not related to the projects created. This could be using it is a download service for non-OSS software, or maybe even illegal stuff.

GitHub does not provide binary hosting, which is why some projects have their downloads on SourceForge.

[ewemoa]

Seems unfortunate -- I found it a convenient way to get apks (older versions too) sometimes...for example:

  https://code.google.com/p/quickdroid/downloads/list