Follow-up Comment #2, bug #60305 (project groff):
> I already removed the URLs last September as commit
83326197dce94750d5cb71a4c84402bdb2f3b558.
Oops. I just noticed my earlier search for `cm.bell-labs.*` was matching stale
artefacts built earlier last year. After running `make clean`, I can confirm
the URLs are indeed, as you said, removed. :) Apologies for the noise...
> Restore the links in Internet Archive form? I have a vague unease with doing
that but I can't quite articulate it.
It's probably because we've never done this before. Our usual fix for bit-rot
is to cull dead links entirely -- but IMHO, deleting an obscure link of
historical interest is worse than leaving broken links everywhere. Future
users won't know that these sources ever existed; at least with a 404, readers
know to consult the Wayback Machine for an archived version.
I suggest we keep a link to the archived versions of these pages, but only in
contexts where they're most relevant. E.g., the *SEE ALSO* section of chem(1),
not comments in the headers of `contrib/chem/examples/122/*.chem`.
> (At least breaking the URLs, as long as they are, won't be a problem. ;-) )
It's benign at the moment, but who knows if those links won't redirect to a
product's landing-page sometime in the future. This is a pretty common
practice for corporate sites that formerly hosted technical documentation
(\*cough\*Apple\*cough\*).
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