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The sites and services existing under the SourceForge umbrella have experienced some significant changes in the past several months. In the first three months of 2009, we've seen management changes and the re-direction of some SourceForge properties. SourceForge is ushering in another change -- free hosting for the Git, Bazaar, and Mercurial source code management systems. These services are now available to every open source project registered with SourceForge.net.

The new source code management (SCM) systems supplement SourceForge's Subversion and CVS support.

The Linux Foundation and Sourceforge have joined forces to rebuild a community on the prime web real estate known as Linux.com.

In its former life, Linux.com featured a mix of unique content and aggregated stories from the wider Linux community. While it hosted forums and allowed reader comments, it wasn't fully collaborative. Late last year, Linux.com ceased updating the aggregated stories, and at the start of 2009, announced that the original content was also coming to an end, but that other (bigger) plans were afoot. The old Linux.com forum software then replaced the articles on the main page, and many were left puzzled about where on earth this rather memorable domain was headed.

The Linux Foundation and Sourceforge have put the transformation in motion -- but where the domain is headed is very much up to the Linux community. Linux developers and users alike are invited to give their thoughts on the IdeaForge on Linux.com.