[Mageia-discuss] Mageia Mirror size

[Juergen Harms]

On 10/01/2010 11:08 AM, Marc Paré wrote:
> I don't think that the mirrors will necessarily drop mirror support for
> Mandriva for Mageia because the Mandriva brand does carry some weight
> and they have not, as of yet' abandoned the developing MandrivaLinux.
> They are still in the server market and have said that their consumer
> product will be carried on as usual.
>
> This is where the marketing of the Mageia brand would maybe make a
> difference. If the stated goals of Mageia are clear and marry well with
> the mirror site philosophies then we could probably convince sites to
> mirror Mageia.

This thread has 2 issues, my comment is on the public mirror topic:

I had, a couple of months back, a discussion with the group-leader at 
Switch who is responsible for managing the Switch mirror site: the 
Mandriva repositories had all at sudden disappeared from that mirror.

I was told that removing Mandriva had been a strategy decision, trying 
to confine the size of the Switch mirror to a "reasonable" size, and 
that the access count to the Mandriva repository did not justify to keep 
it. My private opinion is that Switch - an educational organisation - 
has made a mistake here.

That means that mirror sites do watch
    - the size of software they keep
    - the usage of the corresponding mirror
    - the "relevance" of that software.

It may be a good idea if Mageia initially focuses on getting support 
from some few well-placed mirrors who can be convinced that Mageia is a 
promising "startup" distro and merits goodwill in a pump-priming spirit. 
I guess the language groups could help establishing contacts.

To come back to my Switch experience: I have still good relations with 
their management; at that time, doubts about Mandriva were spreading and 
I did not have the necessary arguments for a discussion at that level. 
This will be different once Mageia is established and has a "good image" 
and a distribution anounced for date xxx. Is it worth while to have a 
small group of "advocates" who are mandated by Mageia to talk to mirror 
sites and discuss which sites to contact? If that helps (and offloads 
the people who do "everything"), I am willing to participate and help).