I read an interesting article that I found via Digg.

http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/08/16/t...re-awards-scam/

Many software download sites give 5-star awards to ALL software on the site, to make the authors of the software put the awards on their sites, and link back to the download site so they can get more popular and climb in ranking.

These "5-star awards", "Editors Pick" and such awards often don't mean anything at all, they have no weigh, they're awarded to all software.

Softpedia isn't there...

All download sites are not created equal. This is why you should download only from reputable sites - some don't test the software at all, you could be getting all kinds of malware from them.

Exactly. Softpedia is pretty cool, Sourceforge is nice.

MajorGeeks is really good. :hello:

I think that SourceForge is the best download site. Never ever came across anything with spyware, adware or anything like that.

Servers with download mirrors in many countries.

Easy to report bugs or to submit feature requests or patches to the author. Forums for support and open discussion. And a way to donate money to author.

I have submitted a couple of very simple patches, and would very much like to donate some money to some projects such as 7-Zip, Miranda IM and FileZilla but haven't done so yet, because I am too lazy, and don't like the idea of transferring money over the internet.

SourceForge is not so much a download site as an open-source developer network. They do host a lot of great projects on there, though.

I'm with Tarun, MajorGeeks is the first place I look for software; Softpedia is another I would class as reputable. There are a few other trustworthy sites, but there are a lot of bad ones - like the 16 that gave awards to that guy's fake program.