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Re: Big Downloads
>>>>> "George" == george portell <75567.716@compuserve.com> writes:
George> You guys are doing a great job! Minimal funding(of
George> which I am a part sn#x),small staff despite this you have
George> produced a great product. You even have a following(of
George> which I am a part).So when you put out an update there
George> MUCH use of the modem. I'm suprised that you still haven't
George> downsized your download files. I believe most of your
George> users could get by on just a .zip file of the exsystem.hfv
George> ,executor.exe and any other updated files.
It's a tradeoff. Without a nice program to automatically do all the
udpates and verify that everyone indeed is current, it is just too
likely that some people will misinstall, or have a mostly working
version that just confuses us when we try to track down a bug.
George> Putting these
George> files where they belong and running the program isn't a
George> big deal. What is a big deal is down loading the same
George> demos and misc files each time. You can probably save
George> yourself a little bit of hassle by separating your
George> exdemos.hfv into your HFV directory.
Yes, however, even if only five users do something totally unexpected
and then send us e-mail with a problem that takes a half hour each to
solve, that's a considerable fraction of a day (20%) spent on a
problem that wouldn't occur if we used complete distributions. We try
to get new experimental distributions out on other sites (vorlon,
cs.unm.edu, sunsite, SimTel) so that ftp.ardi.com isn't the only place
to get them. In addition, our BleedingEdge work allows us to get
patches out faster with less stuff to download. However, 1.99o will
still be a big (approx. 3 MB) distribution -- this isn't so bad for
the folks who have fast internet connections, but it's a real pain for
folks with 14.4 kb modems. Sorry about this, but we're trying to
maximize our productivity over here, and full distributions make us
more productive.
George> Your HFV directory
George> is an excellent idea.Can users contribute?If so how?
The best way to contribute is to send suggestions for what to put out
there. We will not allow people to put things in there directly;
that's just an invitation for trouble. Even if 649 out of the 650
people on this list all do the right thing, one troublemaker (perhaps
an inadvertant troublemaker) could cause us a lot of grief.
BTW, since Vaune quit suddenly, it will take us a little while before
we can get back to the HFV project. It may take us a month even,
considering Hackathon I is upon us.
George> A
George> simple disclaimer in your log on, for those who don't know
George> what "copyright" means, would be in order.I would post
George> some useful shareware in zipped .hfv's.Users could upload
George> you shareware that they would like to see running, in a
George> different directory. A simple README zipped with each
George> upload would probably be a good idea.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. I must say that it is very
annoying that we *can't* just let people upload things themselves,
because clearly we have very enthusiastic users who would easily help
us out on their own time if we were to let them. Perhaps after we buy
a copy of PGP we could build an automated system that would allow
authenticated users to put things out there with no intervention.
However, even that takes time and until Hackathon I is over, we can't
do it, and even after Hackathon I is over, we'll probably be spending
a lot of time courting the press with whatever version Hackathon I
produces.
I hate to be a wet blanket, but that's a byproduct of being
overworked. There are just too many good projects that we can't look
at yet. Remember, when 2.0 ships, we should have plenty more
employees and be able to do lots more. That's why getting 2.0 out is
the highest priority task over here.
--Cliff
ctm@ardi.com
References:
- Big Downloads
- From: george portell iii <75567.716@compuserve.com>