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Retiring Tucows Downloads

tucows.com

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Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#41

Post by stormbrew »

paxys wrote: post #13
tpmx wrote: post #10

> 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 th…

Sites like this have a long tail problem. Yes doing a 100% dump would be best, but 90% of it is likely stuff that hasn't been accessed in years and never will again. So from a resourcing point of view it is better to save "most" than none at all.

And yet, all is still better than most. The IA's entire point of existence is to preserve that long tail stuff that doesn't get preserved otherwise, and they certainly currently hold on to things that are far less useful than literally anything on tucows was (for eg. a website I worked on in 1995 that probably only had a few hundred visitors even then).

I hope this is just soft wording.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#43

Post by codazoda »

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 hated Download.com. It was buying up all my favorite download sites of the era and shutting them down without integrating their features. I think SoftSeek was my favorite and I'm hard pressed to find even a screenshot of it these days.

Off to look.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#44

Post by NDizzle »

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.

Yep. It was one of your first stops after you reformatted Windows. Like you, I haven't heard about them in a long time. I haven't thought about them in a long time, either. Guess that means Windows got more stable? I don't reformat anymore...

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#45

Post by tomjen3 »

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.

For me it seems like a decade or two, but that can't be right because I haven't had internet that long.

Maybe it is just that it was a different life and therefore it seems like that long ago?

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#46

Post by strictnein »

soheil wrote: post #37

tucows and download.com were the "app stores" of the web before the walled gardens of the big companies today. You could distribute your app to one of these sites and have it be automatically syndicated to thousands of other download sites. This is how distributed web worked. We're making the web more centralized and it's not just social media and youtube.

Yeah. Plus you'd have FTP sites that would mirror a variety of sources too. Now Chrome has removed FTP support completely.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#47

Post by corbet »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #27
SummerlyMars wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That was a while ago at this point, back when the download site was still a significant part of what they did.

The acquisition was at the end of the dotcom boom, and we had several options to choose from. We ended up with Tucows for a number of reasons, but right near the top was the fact that they seemed like truly decent and honest people. That decision, I think, is a big part of why LWN still exists today.

The end of the download site is definitely a moment in nostalgia...but in truth I didn't know they were still running it. Tucows has long since moved on; I'm glad they are doing well.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#48

Post by xyzal »

artificial wrote: post #3

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...

... and IE for a nostalgia browser

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#49

Post by richardwhiuk »

selimthegrim wrote: post #33
disgrunt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tucows isn't gone. They're the second largest domain registrar in the world. They run OpenSRS and Hover, for example. They also run Ting.

Ting was sold to DISH in September. They may have kept the ISP part.

It's a joint venture now apparently.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#50

Post by cbhl »

tpmx wrote: post #19
paxys wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sites like this have a long tail problem. Yes doing a 100% dump would be best, but 90% of it is likely stuff that hasn't been accessed in years and never will again. So from a resourcing point of view it is better to save "most" than none at all.

I guess I'm mostly concerned about an authoritative dump from those first years until 1996/1997 or so, probably less than 1 GB.

I wonder if someone still has a copy of the Tucows CD-ROMs from those days? (Since most folks were still on dial-up and everything.)
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