Honk if U *heart* CPAN

/. recently had a blurb about the main linux kernel mirror going offline due to some hardware errors followed by a range of sad and amusing comments by people who have probably no idea what it takes to run a service like that for free. In spite of all the criticism CPAN seems to receive it is now in it's 7th year of nearly continuous service. Andreas König and speed-link in .de run the PAUSE and Jarkko Hietaniemi and FUNET in .fi run the CPAN which is, in turn, propagated by over 200 public mirrors and countless private mirrors around the globe. All of these people and institutions who supply the box, power and bandwidth do so for nothing more than a smile and a thank you now and then. Love it or hate it we should be glad it is rather than is not in this world of sites being forced into subscriptions and ads to support such sorts of services.

permalink Ω 21 January 2002, Helsinki