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Back in 2013 or so, there was a small GUI I had made, and wanted to host the executable somewhere. (A utility for making character sheets in an out-of-print ta
by MereInterest 6y ago
Back in 2013 or so, there was a small GUI I had made, and wanted to host the executable somewhere. (A utility for making character sheets in an out-of-print tabletop RPG, only ever used by the group I ran.) It was about two weeks between uploading it to sourceforge and there being an unexpected mirror on softpedia. I never did check whether it was virus-ridden or not.
When something that was written by a single person, and maybe had half a dozen users at the very most, gets an illegitimate mirror, how can anything larger stand a hope?
- Symbiote 6y agoThose sites do have their uses. I upgraded the firmware on a hardly-used Lexmark printer, which promptly blocked me from printing as my original cartridge was old — a DRM failure. I think it was Softpedia where I found the older firmware and was able to downgrade.
- MereInterest 6y agoAgreed, there are definitely advantages to having older downloads available. Having an iOS-style walled garden is a recipe for disaster, as the blessed version can be revoked and made unavailable by either the developer or the distributer, leaving the user out of the cold. The main issue I run into is the lack of long-term reputation, and that things that scale (e.g. allowing any user to upload files) do so at the expense of trustworthiness. I'd like to be in a position where I can recommend specific sites as safe and reliable, specifically when giving recommendations to less technically adept family/friends. However, with how quickly those reputations become stale (e.g. Sourceforge being bought out, then immediately burning its reputation by adding malware to downloads), that's not something that really can be done without coupling to a hardware ecosystem as well.