Re: gEDA-user: spice libs ( a little puzzled)

[Larry Doolittle <ldoolitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, May 03, 2010 at 03:14:22PM +0000, Kai-Martin Knaak wrote:
> You don't need a data base for this kind of indirection. Any download 
> script would do. However, it makes the process depend on stability of 
> external sources --sources that can change, or go away without any day. 
> Experience shows that this will happen for one reason or another.

Yup, and in some sense this is even true of free material.
When I have put together download scripts, my checklist is:
 - rollover to a series of URLs
 - accept uncompressed, .gz, and .bz2 versions transparently
 - include an sha1sum to confirm you got what was intended
 - the last URL in the rollover list is a URL I control
For the non-redistributable case, the last item is problematic.
You still need it, but it has to be somehow not publicly accessible,
so it can qualify as a legal backup copy.  If the original becomes
unavailable, the backup can become the reference copy for a clean-room
reimplementation.  So this trick becomes a way to defer and prioritize
development of truly free models, not eliminate them.

   - Larry


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