MOUNTAIN VIEW, USA: SourceForge, a Geeknet website and resource for open source (OS) software development and distribution, has announced it has launched its new forge development platform.

Forges are an important part of how companies work with open source developers, providing an environment for collaborating on software design, writing code and exchanging ideas said a press release.

SourceForge's new forge provides a completely redesigned set of tools, including: the issue tracker, wiki, source code management, and discussion system. In addition, the new forge offers considerable flexibility, by allowing developers to integrate and use third party tools directly on the platform the release added.

"Our new forge was written from the ground up. Many of the new features and functionality we built are the result of input we received directly from the community," said Jeff Bates, VP, Products, Geeknet.

"In addition to the redesigned tool set, the new platform also allows third parties to connect their own developer communities with the global open source development community on SourceForge," added Bates.

Adobe Systems Incorporated has created Open@Adobe, the first instantiation of SourceForge's new platform. Open@Adobe is a site aggregating Adobe's openness programs, which includes source code hosting, such as the Adobe Flex framework, and contributions from Adobe to standards organizations, as well as specifications added the release.

"By aggregating the Open@Adobe technology and materials on the new platform, we give open communities and open source developers even better access to these resources through the ecosystem provided by SourceForge," said Dave McAllister, director of Open Source and Standards at Adobe.

Further it added, by utilizing SourceForge, Adobe benefits from SourceForge's new forge platform and large global community, while saving time and resources required to maintain a large repository of code and documentation.