Phil Tomson (ptkwt / shell1.aracnet.com) wrote:
> Those are all great changes, but it still doesn't address the fact that 
> the RAA is just a list of links to potentially non-existent locations.  
> Key packages could be lost after their creators loose interest.

Phil (and others in this thread),

I would like to help start a group of mirrors.  I have space I can
contribute and I'm sure there's a wealth of others in this community
who can offer mirroring space.  And the more we spread the bandwidth, the
less we'll each actually have to give.  (It would actually be quite cool
for someone to write a Ruby P2P app that could help people set up
part-time mirrors on their desktop or server!)

The thing is: no one seems to know the future of RAA.succ, so adding
mirrors to an uncertain project is a waste of time.  We either need
to see the prevailing projects duke it out (rubynet vs. rpkg) or we
could support both for a time.

I've spent some time reading the CPAN modules to get an idea of how
they do mirroring and it just seems to involve FTP sites with metadata
and modules.  I'd love to see us shack up with CPAN because we could
certainly build a cool interface on top of the existing infrastructure.
But I don't think there's enough inertia on our part or theirs to make
this happen.

My feeling is that we should start mirroring the rpkg effort.  It's a
working project.  It seems with RAA.succ that the urge is irresistible
to start something new all the time.  Rather, let's pick a project to
support and make it happen.  Or make both happen.  I don't see the specifics
of implementation (rubynet vs. rpkg) being as big of a deal as just 
forming the league of mirrors which can help us preserve RAA as soon
as possible.

_why