Retiring Tucows Downloads • Hacker News Board

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#21

Post by mikejarema » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

SummerlyMars wrote: post #17

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #7

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.

A former coworker of mine went to work there, and my immediate thought upon learning of this was "The download site?" It turns out they're doing pretty well for themselves. They might not have much brand recognition these days, but they're a much bigger company than I thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucows

Union Square Ventures invested in them a few years back, and blogged about their rationale and some info on where Tucows is/has been headed as a business:

https://www.usv.com/writing/2017/02/tucows/

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#22

Post by dceddia » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

Wow, end of an era. I guess it realistically ended a while ago, but I remember downloading stuff from Tucows when I was a kid playing around on the internet with dialup.

I was really surprised to learn recently that they own Ting (the cell phone provider) and big domain-related businesses like eNom and Hover. Looks like they're doing just fine.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#23

Post by d23 » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:23 PM UTC

Reminds me of download.com and how that was such a go-to site for me. I still have that in my muscle memory when I open a new tab, along with a few others from my childhood.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#24

Post by cecida » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

Downloading Winamp from Tucows so I could listen to illegally downloaded NOFX mp3s. The good old days when the WWW was so new and exciting for me.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#25

Post by aurizon » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

Yes, I went from audio coupled 120 baud BBS in 1983 to the 56K by 1993 and loved Tucows when they emerged. Many happy years spent learning at their knee - as others have said, Thanks, Tucows - live long and prosper in whatever internet sea you now swim in....

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#26

Post by therealmarv » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

Used Tucows as most reliable source for downloading software for Windows back in the days (I think I did not trusted e.g. download.com). Will remember all the cows on the early internet days ;)

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#27

Post by quietbritishjim » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

SummerlyMars wrote: post #17

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #7

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.

A former coworker of mine went to work there, and my immediate thought upon learning of this was "The download site?" It turns out they're doing pretty well for themselves. They might not have much brand recognition these days, but they're a much bigger company than I thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucows

> In 2000, Tucows acquired Linux Weekly News.

What? I had no idea.

There's a reference too [1]. The next article [2] in that series (which was a retrospective about five years later) goes on to say:

> Meanwhile, by this time [2002], Tucows had come to terms with the fact that its acquisition (and ongoing operation) of LWN was not helping it, given the directions its business was taking. So, after some discussion, LWN was unacquired - it was given back to its creators, with Tucows holding on to a small piece just in case.

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/264980/

[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/265813/

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#28

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

gmiller123456 wrote: post #11

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.

Even if the software it was running on never had a bug finding, the hardware would eventually fail and it'd have to be updated to run on modern software. Coupled with the fact that bugs do pop up in operating systems, web servers, etc, it is no free to maintain. The Internet Archive screen scrapes everything and just saves the pages you see, but even that isn't free or trivial if you don't already have the software.

[deleted]

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#29

Post by josh2600 » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

Elliott Noss is super smart and humble. Left a huge impression on me when I met him way back in the day as a youngster. He had nothing to prove at all, just super bright and very fun to talk to; I met him at a tradeshow and he spent 30 minutes with me just because he thought our product was cool.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#30

Post by arkitaip » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

samsquire wrote: post #15

There was something magical about this era when I was a child downloading gameboy emulators like No$GBA. I miss download.com Is there fewer people making desktop software nowadays? It seems there is less software available. It's also very hard to be profitable and monetize software.

I feel like native desktop development has stagnated a lot in the past 10 years. But Electron and other frameworks have enabled hundreds of desktop software that are basically web tech based.