[tug-board] distributing the CD as an image for download
Karl Berry
karl@cs.umb.edu
Wed, 30 Jun 1999 07:39:13 -0400 (EDT)
what do people think about this?
I don't have any strong opinion one way or the other.
should we do it?
Sebastian, I think it's totally up to you. You created the CD.
TUG Board, I know
that you are going to hate this idea, because it damages membership,
I don't think it will damage membership.
can we justify why we *dont* do it?
We don't need to justify it. We're volunteers. What we do is up to us.
He doesn't have a `right' to the CD image, nor do we have an obligation
to provide it.
My biggest concern is the nonfree (defined exactly as I choose it to
mean :) stuff on TL4. If we make the image available for easy anonymous
download, that's pretty much violating the terms of Deutsch/Gaulle/etc,
isn't it?
Is this viable?
To put the image on tug.org and advertise it on comp.text.tex and have a
hundred people download it? No. But to give the image to one person? Sure.
How much of that connection-time, if any, would TUG be paying for ?
We don't pay any $ for tug.org or ctan.tug.org connectivity,
UMass/Boston is hosting those machines gratis.
It must cost something, if only reduced performance on other network services.
A one-time download is meaningless in those terms, we've bandied about
images of TL (among Sebastian & crew) many times before.
Since just this one person wants it (so far), we could *upload* the file
to him, personally, instead of putting it on a server.
Besides, surely the right way to distribute such a file would
be via the CTAN network, rather than from a TUG box,
I don't think adding a multi-hundred-megabyte file to CTAN would be
appreciated, especially by the mirror sites. If this is done, I think
it should be put in a place where it won't get replicated everywhere in
the world and not advertised very heavily (that is, not at all).