[sword-devel] CrossWire mirroring

[Greg Hellings]

On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 3:06 PM, DM Smith <dmsmith at crosswire.org> wrote:
> If someone posts to sword-support a problem with the text in a module (we
> get these all the time), having mirrors complicates support.

If Fedora can have many dozen mirrors, and Debian can have many dozen
mirrors and so can every Linux distribution out there, is it so hard
for us to have mirrors when it comes down to it? Each of these has
requirements for what a mirror MUST, SHOULD and MAY provide and they
have a vetting process when someone wants to become an official mirror
they ensure that the offer follows those requirements.

For the most part those requirements boil down to: provide the
mandatory parts of the distribution with the same layout they have on
the master, and update at minimum every X hours or days. That's hardly
a burdensome task to setup, consisting mostly of a handful of options
to something like rsync. If we wanted to have official mirrors we
could be sure anyone offering followed those requirements and then add
them to a master list of mirrors. It's not that complicated to require
and it's not that complicated to configure. Many people offering to
setup mirrors would already be familiar with the methods and
requirements.

Yes, licensing would still be an entirely different issue, but the
technical implications of offering a mirror system for a pure list of
files is not difficult. And certainly it's not more difficult than
offering ISO images for users to download and encouraging them to be
able to share them with friends!

--Greg