Cheeseshop needs mirrors

[Paul Boddie]

Richard Jones wrote:
>
> And of course I'll reiterate the same line I always do: the Cheese Shop was
> set up by a volunteer, enhanced by some other volunteers and exactly
> nothing more will get done unless more volunteers offer their time.

Sure. I wasn't criticising the Cheese Shop, though: it's a great
service that I make a lot of use of, and while the Vaults of Parnassus
were useful in their day, nothing matches the official package index
either in terms of usability or as a showcase for Python's relevance
in the real world.

However, if people are starting to use it as some kind of auto-
download site where potentially thousands of users acquire a release
of, say, Pylons or TurboGears and then aim their tools and start
downloading many different packages, all without being aware of the
other side of the transaction, then I think the developers of those
tools (as opposed to you and the other infrastructure volunteers) need
to step up and responsibly consider the effects that those tools have.
Some of that consideration might include evaluating how other
mechanisms for package distribution manage to work with huge numbers
of users, rather than having the package index serve up potentially
expensive pages just so that those tools can keep doing the easy
thing, for example.

Paul

P.S. I'll even volunteer to help out if that's what's needed, although
I feel fairly thinly spread already.