discuss: [tbm@cyrius.com: Contacting mirrors with old HOWTOs?]
Subject:
Re: [tbm@cyrius.com: Contacting mirrors with old HOWTOs?]
From:
Colin Watson ####@####.####
Date:
11 Jan 2003 02:35:58 -0000
Message-Id: <20030111023556.GD19866@riva.ucam.org>
On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 10:41:20AM -0800, David Lawyer wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 11:45:51AM +0000, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> > 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 contact the sites which carry outdated HOWTOs and ask them to update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.
That cure is blatantly non-free (consider the person who runs an old
system with similarly old versions of the HOWTOs installed and happens
to export /usr/share/doc via HTTP, or for that matter the Debian
archive) and far worse than the disease. I rather doubt that Martin is
interested in *suing* anyone - just wondering if anyone is looking into
giving mirror sites a nudge.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson ####@####.####
