Search giant Google has launched a new project hosting service for open source software. Designed to leverage the robust Subversion version control system, the new service provides repository hosting and support for issue tracking. With extremely limited functionality and plenty of rough edges, the nascent open source project hosting service is noticeably inferior to most other Google betaware. Despite the deficiencies, the project has potential, and it will probably become more useful as it continues to evolve. The main page bears the common open source meme "Release early, release often," a principle that Google seems to have embraced with great enthusiasm given the raw status of the system.

After creating a test project and experimenting with most of the features, I have concluded that the service is far from ready for production use. With the exception of the issue tracking feature which has a very nifty (albeit buggy) filtering list view widget, the interface is plagued with an uncharacteristic lack of useful ajax flourishes.