BerliOS, one of the first European repositories for code sharing in Germany, has announced it is shutting down at the end of this year -- the company hosted projects for 10 years -- because of a lack of financing and the rise in popularity of alternative resources for developers.

"In a recent survey the community indicated some support in funds and manpower which we would like to thank you for. Unfortunately, the result is not enough to put the project on a sustainable financial basis," a letter posted on BerliOS to its users states.

The letter also directs developers to export their projects from BerliOS to other repositories before the Dec. 31 shutdown.

UPDATE: "Public code sharing is a great thing, and my biggest fear is that thousands of projects currently hosted at BerliOS may disappear if they have no current maintainer to transfer them elsewhere," PY Hyett, GitHub COO, tells LAUNCH via email.

LAUNCH has contacted BerliOS for comment regarding the shutdown and its causes.

"It's a shame, because they had a great service, but it's very hard for them to generate buzz nowadays as they have been very much overshadowed by github," macavity23 writes on HackerNews where users were discussing the reasons for BerliOS' shutdown.

Another user says that open source repositories like BerliOS should be a mix of community engagement and actual business following the GitHub and BitBucket models.

UPDATE: "Many code hosts have become merely code depositories, and people have recognized that we're trying to do something fundamentally different at GitHub," PJ says.

San Francisco-based GitHub, which was launched by PJ, Chris Wanstrath and Tom Preston-Werner in 2008, has generated a lot of buzz in the developer community [ see our profile ].