@Jose:
Is this on purpose or just some bad decision making/lack of time ?
Aminet's policy always was that the uploader/author decides what happens with his package: If he uploads a newer version with the same filename, or uses the Replaces: directive in his readme header, the older package gets removed from Aminet.
This policy stems from a time where (the lack of) diskspace was an issue, but there are actually other good reasons to handle the issue like that:
1. The software on Aminet is the property of the respective authors, we're just hosting it. If an uploader wants to have its package removed, renamed or turned upside down there's not much we can do about it. I guess many developers actually prefer to have only the most recent version of their package available, because it simplifies support and forces you to report bugs instead of silently reverting back to an older version.
2. There's no infrastructure in place (yet, see below) that could be used for storing older revisions of a package without messing up the standard dir structure. Aminet is a mess that badly needs some cleanup anyway, with 15 different ports (from different authors) of wget, 5 versions of apache etc. - keeping old, deprecated packages in the same tree would make things even worse.
That said, we do have plans to make older packages available seperately, e.g. in a special repository that keeps track of different versions etc. But how (and when) this is going to be implemented exactly is unclear as of yet, and our todo list is rather long by now.
Is there any place these files are being kept ?
Since early 2005, removed packages are no longer deleted but moved to a storage directory. They are not available to the public though.
