[sword-devel] mirrors (was: Re: Kindle/Nook Format)

[Chris Little]

On 4/14/2012 1:24 PM, Kahunapule Michael Johnson wrote:
> Yes, of course there is value in mirroring Bible repositories,
> especially in creative access countries! Let's not throw the baby out
> with the copyrighted and restricted bathwater!
>
> I would like to set up a new repository with whatever unencumbered
> Sword modules are worth posting, in such a way that anyone can and
> may mirror or proxy access to it. (I'll also set up a testing
> repository for new redistributable modules.) No modules without
> permission to redistribute will be allowed in that repository. Just
> Public Domain and Creative Commons modules or modules with specific
> permission for redistribution will be allowed. That way, Andrew and
> others could freely mirror the new repository. Any help with the
> filtering process will be appreciated.
>
> I'll also make room for quality non-Sword module formats that are
> freely redistributable and useful.
>
> Any questions? Comments? Is that a good idea?

It sounds like the solution to the problem being described is proxies, 
not mirrors.

My worries about mirroring are:

1) Fragmentation

What you're describing would offer a proper subset of our offerings. A 
subset, other than the empty set itself, is better than nothing, but a 
user expects a mirror to be a mirror, not a portion of a mirror. A 
CPAN/CTAN/CRAN mirror or any Linux distro's package mirror that is 
systematically lacking certain packages is not very useful to anyone and 
is just going to annoy users.

Since there aren't any strict interdependencies between Sword modules, a 
subsetted module repository would be less unuseful than other types of 
mirrors, but I still quite dislike the notion of a repository 
masquerading as a CrossWire mirror that isn't one.

2) Irrevocability

There are cases in which licensing will terminate and we will need to 
remove content from our repositories. There have also been cases in 
which we were mistaken about licensing and had to remove content from 
our repositories.

Any mirror would have to reflect new & updated content as well as 
content that had been removed or undergone a license change. For that 
reason, it would not be reasonable to do manual curation of mirrored 
modules.

3) Integration with our existing ecosystem

There's no notion of mirror repositories, much less partial mirror 
repositories, in our current installMgr / masterRepoList.conf 
architecture. A user could manually add partial mirror repositories, but 
I would object to our including partial mirrors in the 
masterRepoList.conf in any way, because they don't actually represent 
our offerings. (Full mirrors, if they were possible, would be another 
matter. I could see making the repository URL into a list to support 
mirrors, but that wouldn't be appropriate for partial mirrors.)

--Chris