[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).