On Tue, 9 Sep 2008, Jeremy Katz wrote:
Backups, time to maintain, bandwidth for the backups, testing when we make changes, people to notify should our Infrastructure get compromised again, etc, the unknown.
Backups really are equivalent to disk space. Testing for changes -- maybe. But if it's really that inactive, then a change is unlikely to break it. And if it does, then when someone notices, they'll holler.
yeah, when you backup to disk over a LAN, neither of which we do.
Yes, it may be ancient history, but it's still history. And there's a lot that can be learned from history. Just ask the people that have done things like importing _all_ kernel history since the dawn of time (that at least they can find tarballs for). Or ajax and his "X since the dawn of time" archive.
I guess I'm just putting my foot down on this since almost all the support for "keep everything around forever" has come from people that don't have to deal with the consequences of that decision. This isn't a file being kept on someones desktop...
You're right, it's not a file that's being kept on someone's desktop. It's something far more important -- it's the DNA of the evolution of open source.
Then they can keep their DNA somewhere else.
-Mike