[gentoo-dev] Proposed removal of service: torrents.gentoo.org

["Robin H. Johnson" <robbat2@gentoo.org>]

torrents.gentoo.org has been down for a few months now, and there have
been very few comments about it. Up until a few years ago, it was still
quite useful, but I believe that we have sufficient bandwidth and
mirror-coverage around the world that it's become a moot point.

If you have any complaints, objections, etc, please respond in this
thread.

Service: 
---------
torrents.gentoo.org

Service termination date:
-------------------------
Already (it's been broken a while)

Functions: 
-----------
- .torrent file hosting
- BitTorrent tracker
- BitTorrent stats per .torrent files

Handling of functions going forward:
------------------------------------
If we need torrents in future, we should use public trackers, as there
is no further need to run our own BitTorrent tracker. The .torrent
files themselves should live on our own mirrors, with GPG signatures to
prove authenticity (we actually only need to sign the infohash value).

The only thing we'd actually be losing is statistics on the .torrents,
which were never that accurate to begin with - people gamed them more
than once, and we didn't always catch them in time, if anything, what
statistics we have would currently under-report by some degree, possibly
as much as 50%.

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux: Developer, Trustee & Infrastructure Lead
E-Mail     : robbat2@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP   : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85