Bitsavers subscription

I credit Guy Sotomayor with the original idea, a few others chimed in as well. So I ran it by Al Kossow and this was officially blessed by him.... The plan is for me to offer subscriptions to bitsavers for a fee. The idea is that you can sign up for a subscription and pick just the specific directory trees you want, or the entire archive. You are initially sent a complete copy of all the trees you selected (or full archive) on the medium of your choice (CD, DVD, HD, etc.). From that point on - for the subscription fee - you are automatically shipped a set of updates periodically - say every month? - that keeps your own personal bitsavers archive up to date. Perhaps this automated system could also allow purchase of a "one-off" cd/dvd without a subscription containing just the files and/or directories that you tag. Why purchase a subscription? Well, for one - it keeps you from having to constantly check bitsavers for what is new and download those files. It also will hopefully reduce the bandwidth on the site for people who decide they want a full copy. It gives you a way to get all the files in a courteous manner and keep up to date. Another reason - the cost of the subscription would be just a bit higher than the cost of media. The overage above the cost of media goes to the care and feeding of the classiccmp server. That means by buying a subscription you are helping to subsidize the cost of the classiccmp hardware, bandwidth usage, etc. etc. This is much like the FreeBSD CDROM subscription if you're familiar with that. You can get the identical bits elsewhere, but buying a CD subscription is convenient and directly supports the cause. I would also point out that this in no way changes your ability to download files directly from bitsavers or any of the mirrors for free. This is merely a packaging/update service to be viewed as a donation to the cause and a convenience for those who want to stay current on bitsavers. I am going to check with the developer working on the classiccmp website to see if this (tracking the membership, what directories they want, building the burn directories, etc.) is something that will fit well into code he has already done for the new classiccmp. If it is, great. If not, then I'll ask him if he wants this task. If not, then I'll come back to the list and see if people educated in the ways of php/mysql wish to contribute time to creating the software. Of course, if no one is interested, I'll just continue making the occasional trip downtown to the datacenter and burning CD's for people at no charge. It would be nice if there was interest in this though! Jay West