On 2015-05-31 23:59 (+0200), Martin Owens wrote:
Dear Developers,
Because of the thousands of downloads per week of old inkscape releases (mostly windows msi files) from the sourceforge account and because of our successful transition to using our own website with caching proxy fastly.
I will be deleting all files from the SourceForge files folder in two weeks time (June 14th). Please make sure you have any and all files you wish to back up, and any downloads you want to make available for your platform available on the website.
If there are any objections please raise them here and I won't go ahead with the proposed deletion.
It makes me sad to see such a large part of Inkscape's release history (not just the files, but also the timeline, the statistics etc.) completely purged so quickly (on short notice) and so easily (no alternatives).
I tend towards objecting the mentioned 'each on his/her own' method (grab them as long as you can) - this is about files going back as far as Feb 2004. IMvHO all files of past releases should be archived by the project itself, not by relying on individuals storing random (local) copies as "backups". Either way all original upload dates, and past download statistics (and the filters to access them) will be lost entirely once the files have been deleted from the project's 'files' folder at sf.net.
If SF continues its current track, I also wonder whether this action won't backfire later on - as in serving as perfect argument for SF to create their own “mirror” for Inkscape packages (based on http://sourceforge.net/mirror/ ), and to enable the "enhanced-installer-with-payload" wrapper for Windows and OS X downloads at will, without the project having any control over the download links and the files hosted in that “mirror”.
This cleanup is mostly to reduce our online search footprint, reduce confusion with users and prevent users getting hold of old, obsolete or buggy versions of inkscape. (I've mentioned this cleanup before, but I wanted to be more proactive and state that I'll do it and take responsibility)
Best Regards, Martin Owens
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