Retiring Tucows Downloads

#1

Post by andrewdutton » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#2

Post by felixr » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

Oh wow. I have not heard of or seen tucows for ages. The last time i visited their page must have been 15 years ago because it looked like https://web.archive.org/web/20050715014500/http://www.tucows...

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#3

Post by artificial » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

Excellent run! It's been ages since I've downloaded things from Tucows, mainly late 90s and early 00s. The era of PlanetQuake and all the other sites. Hmm, off to the IA for a nostalgia browse...

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#4

Post by Scoundreller » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

> Old sites are a maintenance challenge and therefore a risk.

Hard disagree unless you want/need to update it. They’ve moved it to internet archive, so I’m happy, but still a dumb statement.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#5

Post by rado » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

The second best thing after print magazines' CD-ROMs... also extinct :-<

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#6

Post by tehlike » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 6:59 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #4

> Old sites are a maintenance challenge and therefore a risk. Hard disagree unless you want/need to update it. They’ve moved it to internet archive, so I’m happy, but still a dumb statement.

Depending on the underlying infrastructure.

Unless you freeze the infrastructure too, this is incorrect.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#7

Post by ryeguy_24 » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:00 PM UTC

Wow, nostalgia, it's been years since even hearing about Tucows. Tucows was a huge part of my childhood from 10 to 18 years old. Good run and great early repository for software. Thanks Tucows.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#8

Post by degenerate » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:02 PM UTC

The article doesn't link to the Tucows Downloads Archive, for whatever reason it only links to the archive.org homepage.

Here's the direct link: https://archive.org/details/tucows

It also appears that the archive wasn't manually reviewed; some items are just screenshots, and others are unrelated to software at all.

Example (mildly nsfw): https://archive.org/details/tucows_71077_Sung_Hi_Lee_2

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#9

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#10

Post by tpmx » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

> We’re pleased to say that much of the software and other assets that made up the Tucows Downloads library have been transferred to our friends at the Internet Archive for posterity.

The usage of the word "much" makes it seem like IA crawled most of the archive, "probably".

@ Elliot Noss:

The real classy way to shut down something as historically important as this would be to transfer a 100% (edit: ~100%) dump to the IA.

(Hoping to be disproved.)