GForge is a commercial service originally based on the Alexandria software behind SourceForge, a web-based project management and collaboration system which was licensed under the GPL.
[2][3] Open source versions of the GForge code were released from 2002 to 2009, at which point the company behind GForge focused on their proprietary service offering which provides project hosting, version control (CVS, Subversion, Git), code reviews, ticketing (issues, support), release management, continuous integration and messaging.
Following the SourceForge launch on November 17, 1999, the free software community rapidly took advantage of SourceForge.net, and traffic and users grew very quickly.
[citation needed] Many companies began installing and using it themselves and contacting VA Linux for professional services to set up and use the software.
Plug-ins for Eclipse IDE as well as Microsoft Visual Studio (only for customers and with no trial available) and other related tools were added to increase developer functionality.
Workflow process management to handle making use of the full software life cycle from inception, bug tracking to new release enhancement citation.