Utumno

[medicinestorm]

My hosting's expensive because it's a leased unmanaged dedicated server that I take the appropriate 1040C deduction for. I'm not hurting for either bandwidth or storage space. However, I don't consider it "as reliable" as something run by a reasonable corporation or university -- and it really disrupted the *band community when clockwork.andrew.....edu went down. My wording was intended to avoid encouraging a repeat of that.

...I am unsure if this is directed at me or not. I am unfamiliar with the situation involving clockwork.andrew. I assume it was a similar situation in which hosting for a poriton of the *band community was outsouced, and that source became unreliable, the archive went down, and the services were unavailable?

If so, that makes sense. I missed your wording intended to discourage a similar situation.... but just so I am sure I understand you: you prefer to keep the archive on a less reliable server for that reason?

...Note that when my archive goes up the README will enumerate what known variants aren't there and why. Advice on whether I'm being overly conservative (or liberal) would be good; I'd rather do any takedowns before the official requests come in.

Will do.

[zaimoni]

...I am unsure if this is directed at me or not. I am unfamiliar with the situation involving clockwork.andrew. I assume it was a similar situation in which hosting for a poriton of the *band community was outsouced, and that source became unreliable, the archive went down, and the services were unavailable?

The server was hosted at Carnegie-Mellon University (I think), and was around for about a decade before going offline with no warning. The status of the sunet.se FTP mirror is officially "will go down imminently" as of about a year ago.

If so, that makes sense. I missed your wording intended to discourage a similar situation....

No problem, I'm not that good at writing to the point.

but just so I am sure I understand you: you prefer to keep the archive on a less reliable server for that reason?

I'd rather not make unnecessary impositions on others.

The simplest way, in my mind, to mitigate the risk from "unreliable hosting" is to make it easy to get a copy of the entire archive at once, so I'll be providing a *.tar.bz2 of the archive along with the usual browsable directory structure. As long as at least one of the generally active developers remembers to take the *.tar.bz2, the odds of the archive I'm constructing outlasting my web presence is pretty good.

[Magnate]

The simplest way, in my mind, to mitigate the risk from "unreliable hosting" is to make it easy to get a copy of the entire archive at once, so I'll be providing a *.tar.bz2 of the archive along with the usual browsable directory structure. As long as at least one of the generally active developers remembers to take the *.tar.bz2, the odds of the archive I'm constructing outlasting my web presence is pretty good.

As a packrat with no patience for downloading stuff one at a time, I'm very likely to keep a copy of the tarball. Heck, I may even have some versions to offer from my own collection ... (are you planning to just have the last version of each variant, or as many versions as possible?).

[zaimoni]

... (are you planning to just have the last version of each variant, or as many versions as possible?).

As many versions as possible.

[Orrus]

He has passed the torch of Utumno to me and I am doing my best to maintain it.

Woo awesome! Glad to hear Utumno has been dug up and dusted off. Thanks!