We'll see if Bitbucket takes these kind of drastic measures. Anyway, I don't understand one thing: why is it safer to let developers host the download files on their drive? What's the difference, really? Nobody could upload the files anonymously, could they? Perhaps it's just a way to 'encourage' people to use the drive?
> Anyway, I don't understand one thing: why is it safer to let developers host the download files on their drive? What's the difference, really?
Drive's intended use case and sharing model may support dealing with abuse reports more efficient (for instance, it might make it practical to shift a reported file to non-publicly-shared after receiving an abuse report but before confirming that it contains malware.)
I don't really know the numbers of projects hosted on bitbucket and Google Code but it's true that it's often the case that the underdog (say Bitbucket in this case) offers the best value. Apart from the downloads they also offer free private repos.