On 10/01/2010 11:08 AM, Marc Paré wrote:
I don't think that the mirrors will necessarily drop mirror support for
Mandriva for Mageia because the Mandriva brand does carry some weight
and they have not, as of yet' abandoned the developing MandrivaLinux.
They are still in the server market and have said that their consumer
product will be carried on as usual.
This is where the marketing of the Mageia brand would maybe make a
difference. If the stated goals of Mageia are clear and marry well with
the mirror site philosophies then we could probably convince sites to
mirror Mageia.
This thread has 2 issues, my comment is on the public mirror topic:
I had, a couple of months back, a discussion with the group-leader at
Switch who is responsible for managing the Switch mirror site: the
Mandriva repositories had all at sudden disappeared from that mirror.
I was told that removing Mandriva had been a strategy decision, trying
to confine the size of the Switch mirror to a "reasonable" size, and
that the access count to the Mandriva repository did not justify to keep
it. My private opinion is that Switch - an educational organisation -
has made a mistake here.
That means that mirror sites do watch
- the size of software they keep
- the usage of the corresponding mirror
- the "relevance" of that software.
It may be a good idea if Mageia initially focuses on getting support
from some few well-placed mirrors who can be convinced that Mageia is a
promising "startup" distro and merits goodwill in a pump-priming spirit.
I guess the language groups could help establishing contacts.
To come back to my Switch experience: I have still good relations with
their management; at that time, doubts about Mandriva were spreading and
I did not have the necessary arguments for a discussion at that level.
This will be different once Mageia is established and has a "good image"
and a distribution anounced for date xxx. Is it worth while to have a
small group of "advocates" who are mandated by Mageia to talk to mirror
sites and discuss which sites to contact? If that helps (and offloads
the people who do "everything"), I am willing to participate and help).
