Re: http://gcc.gnu.org/mirrors.html

[Matthew Langford <langfml at Eng dot Auburn dot EDU>]

On Fri, 7 Dec 2001, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:

> On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Matthew Langford wrote:
> > What's up with this page?
> 
> I'm not a native speaker, but which part of "Please let us know if you
> are mirroring the GCC pages so we can note it here!" was unclear to you?
> 
> We only list those mirror sites that inform us that they want to be
> listed.

Do these sites have to mirror all the GCC pages or just the release
directories?  If all, why?  It seems to me you have a problem getting
people to mirror GCC.  And yet, as I mentioned, there must be a gazillion
GNU mirror sites.  You _know_ they are mirroring, and they are mirroring a
gzipped release of your software.  Why not mention _them_ on your
downloads page? It's all about _downloads_ and not total site mirroring.  
As long you make sure the GNU site is kept semi-constantly up to date, a
mirror of GNU is a mirror of you.

You are making people come to you, like it's a special privilege to mirror
GCC, instead of looking to list already available mirrors, so people can
get your software and make things happen.

> (I'll happily apply a patch of yours to improve the wording on that
> page. Really!)

Okay, pseudo-patch:  stick in a link to http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html,
saying these sites may be slightly slower to update, but are preferrable
to a trans-oceanic link.  And then set cron jobs to make sure the GNU ftp
sites are mirroring at least the latest stable release.


--
MattLangford