Folks -- 

We are officially implementing a new policy for source mirrors.  Whereas
before we only had one type of source mirror which was required to mirror
everything Gentoo Linux offered, we are now splitting that into two
categories:

* Full Source Mirrors -- these mirrors will continue to be required to
  mirror the full Gentoo Linux source tree.
* Partial Source Mirrors -- these mirrors will only mirror /distfiles and
  /snapshots.  They will not mirror /releases, /experimental and any other
  directories we add in the future.

The main reason for this change is to recognize that many of our mirrors,
while wanting to help support Gentoo Linux, simply do not have the
resources available to mirror what is an ever-increasing amount of data.

If you are a source mirror and wish to be a full source mirror, you do not
need to do anything.  Nothing will change for you.

If you are a source mirror and wish to change to a partial source mirror,
you need to do two things:

*  Fill out a bug on bugs.gentoo.org, assigned to the "rsync" category.
   (yes, we need to change that category name)  Please state in the bug
   the name of your mirror and the fact you want to become a partial source
   mirror.
*  Once we have confirmed the change by posting a response to the bug you
   report, you can update your rsync scripts to exclude the /releases and
   /experimental directories.
 
If you have any questions, please let me know.  Also, while this new policy
will offer some relief to our mirrors who are short on disk space, we will
continue to find other ways to reduce the mirror space required by Gentoo
Linux as much as possible.  We appreciate the support, resources and time
that our mirrors offer and want to be as respectful of that as possible.

Thanks.

--kurt