Aminet replacement

[Minuous]

It seems clear that Aminet is dead. Availability since early January has been <10%.

The Aminet administrators have not put out an announcement to the community, it seems safe to assume that it is effectively dead from this point onwards.

Of course Aminet is a valuable resource and this is why its continued availability is vital to the Amiga community.

However there is obviously still a need for somewhere to release software to. Rather than simply complaining about the present situation, I propose to actually *do something* and set up a new Amiga PD site. I'm willing to be a webmaster of, and contributor to, such a site.

I think it is fair to say that when there is no Aminet, nor Aminet-like site, the Amiga is for all intents and purposes dead. As it has been the primary source of new Amiga software for over 10 years.

I note that MorphOS and OS4 do seem to be covered by MorphZone and OS4 Depot, however these sites are completely unsupportive of the OS3.x community and OS3.x software and thus cannot be considered to be adequate replacements for Aminet.

I propose to keep the existing readme format and directory structure. However I'm open to suggestions by others who are willing to be co-administrators of the site.

[justthatgood]

Um, unless you are giving them money and donations to run their server, you really wouldn't have much to say. I've seen many people that complain about certain websites and services, yet haven't contributed a damn dime to the operations of such said site.

So what the site is offline. So what they haven't been able to communicate. Not everyone in the world has the infinite time that some people have to get things done.

[rkauer]

I use Aminet on a regular basis and it is run "almost" fine.

I think they have some hardware issues, not more than that.:roll:

Will be a disgrace if Aminet shutt they servers down. :boohoo:  

[Plaz]

It doesn't seem to be totally down. The site does respond, files, resent upload info and a message about a server problem is available. Maybe they are just totally busy. The archives also still exist in locations like ...

ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/os/amiga/aminet/ and
ftp://ftp.plig.net/pub/aminet/

I don't know how aminet is setup but maybe it just the search engine server that's down. It seems many of the mirror sites are offline though, yet the associated ftp archives remain. Any one have an estimate to what total donations it would take to help get it back to 100%? Is it money, spare time, spare equipment, or a combination that would get things back to 100%?

Plaz

[avanham]

I don't think we should be complaining about three weeks of sub-optimal aminet server access when you consider how amazing it has been for the last 15 years or whatever.  It is an amazing site.  I love the way that it is organized and how all-encompassing it is.  I have no idea how many people are involved in running aminet, but they have to be among the most dedicated people who ever tried to promote the amiga.  

Let's give them some slack here.  Maybe it is a matter of money.  Possibly they are tired of all the effort involved.  Or maybe they are just plain busy at the moment so they haven't gotten around to getting it up a running at full capacity.

That being said, I agree that it would be nice to have a message saying what the problem is.  Maybe it is something that we could all help fix (money?)

I doubt anyone could come up with a solution that would replace aminet without simply copying the entire site and changing the interface somehow.

[AmigaMance]

@Minouous
 I think you are over-reacting. It's not like it's down for months and it's still accessible in degraded mode at www.aminet.net . I know that the lack of updates can become frustrating but i think it's a matter of time for the problem to be fixed.

[SuperTurbo]

at least there are new uploads being added to aminet, the only difference seems to be that it´s not possible to see which OS the file is made for (and probably some other suff as well).

I also found this note in their news section from 19 dec 2006:

As a last note, it's worth noticing that in 2006, we have surpassed the amount of uploads from 2005, 2004, 2003 and even 1992, which was the year Aminet started.

nice to see, but perhaps not so strange since Aminet was down for several years...  :-P

[ChaosLord]

Aminet search function has been broken for months, not weeks.

If you make a new Aminet replacement then please, please, please I beg you, make a working search function!

Our Minuous which art in Australia, hallowed be thy name. Thy users come, thy site be done in Earth as it is in cyberspace. Give us this day our daily software. And forgive us our lack (of hardware), as we forgive them that lack against us. And lead us not into BROKEN SEARCH FUNCTIONS. But deliver us from microsoft. Amen.

[skurk]

I can't remember having any problems with neither Aminet nor the search function.  In fact, ever.

Maybe you're using a broken mirror?

[Minuous]

Sometimes you can still get downloads.

But uploading has not been possible for weeks.

[InTheSand]

Aminet is certainly not dead! Access via the main site and at least some of the mirrors is still fine.

Aminet has had problems before, but has come out just fine... No need to start sounding its death knell just yet...
 
 - Ali

[madsjm]

"Replacement being set up"??

I have been downloading numerous files from Aminet the past few weeks, and never had any issues.

[weirdami]

Something I learned from my own website (the MST3K one) is that most people that say they want to do or are going to do something, don't. The key is to do something, then tell people about it when it's done.

I hate websites that say "under construction", because they never go to the "constructed" phase and just die on the vine. If I add a new feature to my site, I just do it and announce that it's done. Saying I'm thinking about putting up a new section doesn't help anyone and I'll just be adding to the lame on the Internet.

^^^ = announcing isn't doing.

[Minuous]

The purpose is to see whether there is support for doing this in the community.

Obviously if no one is going to use such a site there's no point setting it up.

I don't have the time and resources to do everything myself, but I am offering to do a share of the work. However assistance is needed, eg. with hosting.

Sorry if you were expecting something to already be running. You could offer to help, that might speed things up a bit.

[Matt_H]

Why not email the Aminet team to see what's going on?