Today SourceForge is announcing an open beta period for a new set of tools for developers. Specifically, our engineers have begun work on new and better tools for project members who want to use our tracker, wiki, and source code management. We also have a new open source project management environment. And there’s more to come.

The SourceForge 2.0 beta is ready to roll right now. If you want to try it out, you can register a project at http://sourceforge.net/register-project and specify that you want to create the new project on the SF 2.0 beta. SourceForge Product Director Nate Oostendorp says, “Once we have stability, feature parity, and a data migration path with the existing tools, the new forge tools will replace the existing developer interface.”

“This is the next iteration of the SourceForge development tools and platform. We want to give you an early look as we continue to release early and often and build great new tools,” says Senior Director of Engineering Dean Henrichsmeyer.

Why change the oldest and best-known open source forge? “We wanted to reboot our core tools and build on a new framework,” Oostendorp says. “A good deal of the existing code in the existing tools was nearly a decade old.” Oostendorp says the current changes mark the start of an ongoing effort. “We’re going to continue to enhance and improve the beta tools, and also look for improvements to the downloads and stats interfaces coming soon.”

Try the SourceForge 2.0 tools and let us know what you think. You can share your comments via Twitter (we’re @sourceforge) or on the #sourceforge IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, or file a support ticket.