Auto-saving distfiles on freebsd (was: FreeBSD for webserver?)

[cpghost]

On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 11:47:04PM -0700, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> Another problem with ports is that all of them like pulling the
> original source from the author's site.  I've had a few where the
> author released the code under GPL then a few years later lost
> interest, stopped paying whatever ISP he had the main site for
> the program at, and the porter also lost interest in the project
> and never bothered obtaining the last available tarfile from
> the authors site and uploading it to freebsd, then both disappeared.
> Another one I can recall is the gated code, similar issue.

Why not add this to pointyhat scripts? Just upload a copy of every
*new* distfile ever encountered from the author's page to freebsd
(unless there are legal constraints not to do so, of course)?

The ports would still go to the primary sites (to conserve bandwidth),
but should the original distfile disappear, it would be still available
on freebsd.

-cpghost.

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