Month: June 1996

State of Info-Mac

Hello everyone!

In the last few weeks, I noticed that the Info-Mac archive has been updated
in quite unusual intervals. There are days with just 1 or 2 files being
made accessible, and other days when the number of new files is closer to 65.

A colleague of mine is a shareware author, and more than 2 weeks ago
he uploaded another submission to ,
waiting for it to be put on the server. And there it still sits, as he
found out when he tried to upload it again, assuming that it had gone missing.
The server message he got back was that the file can't be overwritten.

My question is: What's up with Info-Mac? It seems to me that the Info-Mac
volunteers can no longer handle all the work, so the archive has run into
the problems mentioned above.

What can we users of this great (thanks a lot to all volunteers) Mac archive
do to help out with the maintaining? I see several possibilities, please
comment:

1. Get a sponsor (TidBITS has done it before), so maybe you can afford a
staffer for the archive.
2. Look out for new volunteers who could help with maintenance work.
3. Collect licensing fees from major mirrors of the Info-Mac archive, i.e.
AOL (They get the best Mac shareware archive on the planet for free, don't
they?)
4. Or: why not collect an upload fee from shareware authors? My colleague
for example would be happy to contribute financially if on the other hand
the Info-Mac archive was upgraded.

If you suffer from work overload, dear Info-Mac volunteers, please tell us
so that all users may help to do something about it.

I send this message to the Digest so as to see what others think about the
current state of Info-Mac.

I'd really appreciate your comments.

Ciao,

Gregor Rothfuss

gregor@swix.ch

P.S. Whatever the state of the Info-Mac is, it's still the best. However, it
could even become better.