12 Mar
2007
12 Mar
'07
9:18 p.m.
On 3/10/07, Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:
Has anyone else noticed that ftp search services like
archie seem to
have disappeared, that the content on ftp sites isn't indexed by
google very well and that large software archives seem to be
disappearing?
Try searching for old copies of fractint and they are hard to find,
even though they were everywhere as recently as 10 years ago.
What's happened to FTP?
FTP has been deprecated. HTTP is a much better protocol for file
transfers, apart from things that should never be done during transfer
like CR<>CRLF or character set swaps. But that's the minor problem.
The major problem is that the old FTP archives turned into business
opportunities. The old military and university sites were
predominatly transferred to .coms that thought they could somehow make
a profit on them. Of course most of them didn't, and so they folded
or got gobbled up.
The ones that did figure out a way to profit turned towards providing
non-free software at the top of the list. A lot of the old stuff is
out there at the some of these sites, but you'll have to wade through
15 pages of Windows payware and shareware before you'll find it.
Should we be working to archive large FTP software
repositories?
Yes, if it's not too late.
Eric