On 14-08-2001, Robert Bihlmeyer wrote thusly :
Jan Hidders hidders@win.tue.nl writes:
Because the GFDL allows you to download everything and start your own server.
Well the GFDL also wants transparent copy to be easily available. I don't consider spidering wikipedia to be an option open to the "man from the street". So someone at wikipedia.com should /really/ implement periodic snapshots of the wiki database. Technicalities can't be a problem, just add something like 18 04 * * * tar czf /webspace/wikipedia-`date +%Y%m%d`.tar.gz /wikidir 16 04 * * * find /webspace -maxdepth 1 -name wikipedia-* -mtime +7 | xargs rm (2 lines) to an appropriate crontab. Pretty please?
With some Perl magic you could request all edit-pages and dowload the pre-formatted text, [...]
Sure, and perhaps I'll do that some day. But it puts much more workload on the server than providing a snapshot, so I'd rather avoid it. And if more people exercise their rights in this manner, it will only get worse. A snapshot is much lighter on bandwidth and CPU, can be mirrored via standard software.
you could even use the same Wiki software, and I'm sure we can trust Bomis enough to warn us in advance.
For me its not so much a question about trusting Bomis than of convenience and "taking your own license seriously".
A very good suggestion with a downloadable copy of Wikipedia. It would certainly add more credibility... and freedom.
However, Larry is doing an excellent job and I see no sign that this is going to change. So setting up an alternative server would not only be a bit silly, but also higly unthankful, considering the wonderful opportunity they have given us.
[snip]
Regards, kpj.