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

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

On Wed, 12 Dec 2001, Phil Edwards wrote:

> Matthew Langford wrote:
> > You _know_ they are mirroring, and they are mirroring a
> > gzipped release of your software.  Why not mention _them_ on your
> > downloads page?
> 
> Maybe they don't want the entire world downloading from them.
> 
> People choose to mirror software for reasons /other/ than making it
> available to everyone else out there.  I used to mirror a subset of the
> Linux kernel patches repository, but it was for me and my colleagues
> in the same building, not for the rest of the planet.  Listing me as a
> "mirror site" would have been harmful, not helpful.

"They" was a reference to public sites mirroring GNU.  They are already
listed on the GNU mirror web page.  This is a superset of GCC.  If they
are willing to be listed to the world as carrying the entire GNU software
universe (which includes the GCC stuff), they are already mirroring the
main part, the Download, of your distribution.  It would be helpful to
visitors to mention there are alternatives to the very few listed on your
web page.  Or perhaps you like everyone in the US and Canada tagging the
network connections of the poor saps who walked to your ivory tower
and volunteered their mirrors?  

The link to the actual gcc.org download is spelled out but not an active
link.  I suppose this is to strongly encourage people to use the mirrors.
But then, you don't have many mirrors listed:  one for the North American
continent, two for South America, and one for Australia, from what I saw. 
 Oh well, yank it from another continent.


> > You are making people come to you, like it's a special privilege to mirror
> > GCC,
> 
> In a way it is:  known mirror sites are allowed to bypass some (all?) of
> the connection limits on the FTP server.

Maybe you are looking at things completely backward.  Instead of guarding
the software, and worrying about who is coming in to steal the software
and rob your bandwidth, you could think of it as _distributing_ your
releases, and how to _put_ it on as many servers as possible.  In that
direction, making use of the existing GNU mirroring system (both by
web-mention and by update-seeding) would be most helpful, I think.  From
the first viewpoint you seem to be doing nicely; the second one, you are
adequate only for yourselves, through CVS, and Europe and Japan.



--
MattLangford