discuss: [tbm@cyrius.com: Contacting mirrors with old HOWTOs?]
Subject:
Re: [tbm@cyrius.com: Contacting mirrors with old HOWTOs?]
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
10 Jan 2003 18:43:12 -0000
Message-Id: <20030110184120.GA712@lafn.org>
On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 11:45:51AM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> Martin Michlmayr asked me to forward this to discuss@, as he's not
> subscribed and so can't post.
>
> --
> Colin Watson ####@####.####
>
> ----- Forwarded message from Martin Michlmayr ####@####.#### -----
>
> Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 12:33:42 +0100
> From: Martin Michlmayr ####@####.####
> To: Colin Watson ####@####.####
> Subject: Contacting mirrors with old HOWTOs?
> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i
>
> Colin, please forward this to discuss@ as I'm not allowed to post.
>
> I used to maintain the Linux Consultants HOWTO (among other stuff).
> I gave it away in 1998 or so. Yet, when you google for
> "Linux Consultants HOWTO" "Martin Michlmayr" you will get _many_ hits.
> I remember when Greg was the coordinator of the LDP, he wanted to
> contact the sites which carry outdated HOWTOs and ask them to update
> or remove them. I think this never happened, however. Are there any
> plans to get this old cruft which is still on many mirrors purged?
I looked into this in Jan.-Mar. 2001 for my Modem-HOWTO. David Merrill
even wrote it up for the LWN. I found several hundred sites that had stale
docs. It would be quite a project to try to fix this, and many would
likely not respond or never get emails sent to them. Even ones that
responded, might not bother to fix the problem. I came up with the
suggestion that licenses prohibit distributing stale copies unless they
are clearly labelled as such. Even in this case I would expect a
problem but the license would give us some leverage to get the sites to
fix it. If we sued and won (as we likely would) just one case, it would
scare other sites into either keeping our docs up-to-date or not carrying
them at all.
David Lawyer
>
> --
> Martin Michlmayr
> ####@####.####
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
