Today SourceForge it is excited to launch DevShare, a new opt-in, revenue-sharing program aimed at giving developers a better way to monetize their projects in a transparent, honest and sustainable way.

DevShare is a new partnership program designed to make it easy for SourceForge developers to offer a selection of trusted open source applications to users, turning downloads into a source of revenue that can help fund their projects. This revenue will help these projects to grow and offer additional software to our users.

We take our role at SourceForge as the trusted source for open source very seriously. That is why we spent considerable time looking for partners we could trust and building a system that does not detract from our core user experience.

We know many open source users are skeptical about monetization initiatives. SourceForge will always respect the rights of our users and we will never infringe on them. DevShare offers a transparent installation flow that gives users all the necessary information to make educated choices about what software to install.

Thanks to DevShare, we are now able to offer a bundle program that is fully compliant with Google’s strictest policies. This includes a solid compliance process for both open source applications and third party offerings. The whole installation flow is clean and has no misleading steps. Uninstallation procedures are exhaustively documented and all applications are verified to be virus and malware free. You can see this on the latest version of FileZilla, our largest DevShare partner to date.

Last but not least, we will only include projects that have opted into our program. Our compliance processes are very strict and, as such, our beta program is going to be invitation-only during this first phase. If you would like to participate in this revenue-sharing program, just drop us an email, we’ll be back to you as soon as possible.

Stay tuned for more!