http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/aminet30000.html (Amiga Plus Extra No. 5/97, 05/1997)
Today, May 16th 1996, four years after its inception, Aminet is the world's largest collection of freely distributable software for any computer system. I'd like to seize this opportunity to talk about the recent history of our archive and thank everyone involved. Also, to celebrate the event, we're giving away a CDROM drive and 10 Aminet CD subscriptions; read more below.
Again, there has been steady growth. The number of mirrors has increased from 12 to 30, we have more and better search services and other incremental improvements. Some services still wait to be implemented, though, especially the possibility for everyone to submit comments to Aminet software and append them to the .readme file. Other services are only rudimentary, like the rating facility. Clearly, improvement is due.
More important than those access features, however, are the contents. And here, the situation looks very good. Firstly, there have been more uploads by the users than ever before, with a record high of 430 in one week just recently. Additional growth was caused by the fact that the Aminet CD's now appear bi-monthly (which is the way the participants in a large survey wanted it), and because those CD's don't get completely filled in that short time, more material is integrated into Aminet regularly to fill them. Thanks to that, we now have large collections of clip art, mods, fonts, games and other interesting stuff from outside sources on Aminet.
The most important development, though, is the fact that Aminet has now been accepted by the world outside the networks as the place where one can publish freely distributable software to make it widely available. Thus, almost everything that is available for the Amiga ends up here. And I am absolutely convinced that this service, the availability of everything to everyone, has contributed considerably to the amazing life-force that the Amiga is showing in those tough times.
1995 1996 Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Mar Apr ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- 1061 923 1129 916 1269 776 907 1068 949 873 1042 985 1240 1274 Subdirectory size in megabytes: (total: 5052M) Growth factor since the 10000 files posting: biz comm demo dev disk docs game gfx misc mods mus pix text util --- ---- ---- --- ---- ---- ---- --- ---- ---- --- ---- ---- ---- 119 178 902 188 20 170 431 257 246 961 44 1049 317 162 2.2 2.2 5.8 2.0 2.0 8.1 3.4 1.0 3.2 3.6 1.3 7.7 5.3 1.6 Number of files at the mirrors: ftp.wustl.edu ALL ftp.ninemoons.com ALL ftp.unina.it ALL kelly.uni-paderborn.de ALL ftp.uni-paderborn.de ALL ftp.grolier.fr ALL sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk ALL ftp.netnet.net 25950 ftp.tas.gov.au 22273 ftp.eunet.ch 20446 ftp.uni-erlangen.de 19552 ftp.luth.se 16053 ftp.ua.pt 15019 ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de 12329 ftp.tu-chemnitz.de 12329 ftp.uni-siegen.de 9009 sunsite.cnam.fr 6336 ftp.fh-augsburg.de 5647 ftp.uni-trier.de 5453 ftp.uni-stuttgart.de 3729 ftp.uni-bremen.de 3240 ftp.uni-kl.de 2180 ftp.gui.uva.es 1792 ftp.uni-oldenburg.de 916 ftp.giga.or.at 871
Annotations are the last big missing feature from Aminet. Everyone should be able to post comments about other people's uploads, giving usage hints, recommendations or compatibility notes. I still cannot promise any dates on this one, but chances to get this implemented have increased now.
The other nice-to-have that's still missing are views. Views are trees of softlinks that create a different image of the Aminet file collection. You could, for example, have a second 'Aminet' that only contains modules, but the modules are sorted by author. Or one that only contains files that are in the download charts. That, too, will still take a while.
Finally, some improvements are due in the access software of Aminet CDs. That will hopefully be adressed soon, too.
1 CDROM drive with Aminet Set 1,2,3 and a one year Aminet CD subscription
10 one year Aminet CD subscriptions
We're also accepting snail-mailed submissions, send them (just your guess and your address) to:
Schatztruhe GmbH
Aminet-Wettbewerb
Veronikastr. 33
D-45131 Essen
GERMANY
Submissions are accepted until mid-August. Winners will be drawn then. Good luck!
There are countless people who keep Aminet going. I'd like to thank them all, but especially:
I hope you liked the service so far, and if you have any comments, wishes or ideas, please do contact me.
Urban D. Mueller umueller@aminet.org
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