loki99 wrote:Bob P wrote:you can't.
Does this mean that you no longer offer your Jackass! tarballs to download for free?
I just failed to download the pentium4 2005.2 tarball, because of error 403.
loki99 wrote:I wasn't assuming anything, it is just that..
I think its fair to say that you made an assumption when you threw out a public question asking whether I was demanding money for Jackass!
The way that the post was written, I don't think that its at all unfair for me to interpret that it was intended as a slur designed to embarass me in the event that I were actually asking people to pay for Jackass! But that's not really important.
The fact that hyperlinks to the
documentation provide 403 errors doesn't have anything to do with your
tarball download problems. Those are two complete and separate issues that you assumed were related. They're not.
I've been getting alot of panic-stricken PMs and emails over the past couple of days about the intermittent status of the server and interrupted file downloads, so to stop everyone from speculating and jumping to conclusions, I guess I need to make an announcement.
1. If you have a question about Jackass!, you should read the Support Page on the Jackass! website. 
2. If you still need more information, you should visit the Jackass! Testing Website.
3. To all of you Jackass! users who are worried about the ability to get free downloads, relax. Its not as if some Supreme Sinister Machiavellian Master Plan has been concocted to deny you of your "right" to free software. No, this is not a case where The Man is trying to keep you down. We're just having technical problems.
Problem One: Documentation "Problems." In reality there are no documentation problems. The 2005.2 documentation downloads have been restricted because the 2005.2 documentation is being deprecated. This shouldn't surprise anyone, as the website clearly states that we're getting ready to release 2006.0. Insofar as the documentation is nothing more than a list of who has contributed to the project, and it isn't an installation manual, people are making much ado about nothing if they worry about this.
Problem Two: Hardware problems. We've had multiple hardware failures since the holidays, and 2 computers have died in a 2 week period. The webserver has died repeatedly because of severe hardware problems. My desktop development box also died from being overworked when I tried to press it into service as a backup webserver.
As a result, the master mirror now has an empty mirror directory and the slave mirrors are now syncing on an empty download tree. Repeated efforts to fix the hardware have been unsuccessful. That is why there are no files to download.
The bottom line is that because my development box AND my webserver have died, work on both Jackass! and Rockhopper! has ground to a halt, and can't be restarted until the boxes get repaired and/or replaced yet another time.
I've been publishing updates related to these problems on the Jackass! and Rockhopper! websites' "support" pages. If anyone hasn't been able to find this information, it seems that its because the users have been frequently visiting the "downloads" page, but have't been bothering to read the "support" page.
Although I guess I shouldn't find it surprising that users are interested in taking downloads but are not interested in giving back support, I do find it rather disappointing.
Putting this all in perspective, I have already burned up 5 desktop computers by pressing them into extreme service to bring Jackass! and Rockhopper! to the Gentoo community. I hate to say it, but computers, electricity and bandwidth cost me money. There's a limit to how much money I'm going to throw out of my pocket to support these projects just so everyone else can have a free lunch -- espeically when all of the inquiries and complaints seem to come from people who aren't on the Contributors List.
Jackass! and Rockhopper! aren't anything that a user can't build on his/her own. Although Jackass! and Rockhopper! make a countless number of people's lives easier, nobody NEEDS Jackass! and Rockhopper! You could build them yourself. But human nature being what it is, people always want somebody else to do the work for them, and they want something for nothing. If a user chooses to use Jackass! and Rockhopper!, then they're using my computers, my electricity, my bandwidth and my time to save themselves time and effort. Personally, I think that constantly taking from the Open Source Community without giving anything back constitutes exceptionally poor form. But I guess that I'm just seeing the ugly side of human nature.
In the big scheme of things, these repeated hardware failures may be a self-limiting method of regulating how much free software the open source community can get before they are forced to think about the concept of support. I know that the prospect of buying yet another computer out of my own pocket, only to sacrifice it on the Altar of Open Source so that 150,000 strangers can take something from me while giving nothing in return is giving me pause. In a perfect world, there would be enough support for the project that considerations like this would not be an issue.
It all amounts to simple mathematics. If enough people don't voluntarily support the project to cover the cost of an on-line, electronic distirbution medium, then on-line electronic distribution will have to go away.
essentially, you get access to the latest and greatest releases of Jackass! before everyone else does. and you're allowed to put a "Jackass! Beta Tester" link in your tagline if you want to. that's about it.
(or a "no" with a short explanation to point me to the right direction 
