[Coco] Colorcomputerarchive harmful behavior

[Aaron Wolfe]

I'm not suggesting older versions of software have no value.  However, even
in the example you describe it would be preferable to have the software
available on the official website and managed by the project maintainers.

Since its an open project, anyone could archive these versions right on the
nitros9 project page/wiki along with a description of why they are there
and when a user might want to use them.  Much better than a folder full of
old files with no guidance on how to use them and no relationship to the
project and people that created them, not to mention no verification of
their correctness.

I'm not sure what function a third party copy of files can provide that
isn't done better through direct participation in the official project.
 On May 26, 2014 10:24 AM, "Robert Gault" <robert.gault at att.net> wrote:

> Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>
>> Who runs this site?  Can anyone get in touch with them and ask them to
>> please stop distributing outdated versions of software created and
>> maintained by other people?
>>
>> Its one thing to be an "archive" of software that is no longer under
>> development, but distributing out of date versions of current projects
>> does
>> nobody any good.  That's why active projects nearly always insist on
>> coordinated mirrors (or do not allow mirrors at all).
>>
>> The heart might be in the right place, but things like this make our
>> community even more difficult for newcomers.
>>
>> Never distribute the files of someone elses active project!
>>
>> /rant off
>>
>>
> Aaron,
> I can think of a good counter example for distributing old versions of
> active projects. :)
>
> NitrOS-9 is an active project but if we could not get older versions to
> run, more than a few programs would fail. For example, the change of
> parameter names for tmode and xmode causes problems with programs that call
> these commands. I was just looking at Shanghai for OS-9 which contains
> tmode -echo. As that game is not a 3rdparty entry in NitrOS-9, it will not
> like recent versions of NitrOS-9.
>
> Robert
>
>
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