Wow, nostalgia, it's been years since even hearing about Tucows. Tucows was a huge part of my childhood from 10 to 18 years old. Good run and great early repository for software. Thanks Tucows.
It turns out they're doing pretty well for themselves. They might not have much brand recognition these days, but they're a much bigger company than I thought.
What? I had no idea.
There's a reference too [1]. The next article [2] in that series (which was a retrospective about five years later) goes on to say:
> Meanwhile, by this time [2002], Tucows had come to terms with the fact that its acquisition (and ongoing operation) of LWN was not helping it, given the directions its business was taking. So, after some discussion, LWN was unacquired - it was given back to its creators, with Tucows holding on to a small piece just in case.
The acquisition was at the end of the dotcom boom, and we had several options to choose from. We ended up with Tucows for a number of reasons, but right near the top was the fact that they seemed like truly decent and honest people. That decision, I think, is a big part of why LWN still exists today.
The end of the download site is definitely a moment in nostalgia...but in truth I didn't know they were still running it. Tucows has long since moved on; I'm glad they are doing well.
Glad to get to the comments and see further reinforcement of that feeling. It seems you had a great read on them as people. Kudos.
Nowadays 'anti-virus' subsumes all those products into one unified thing.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/wininet/n...
Downloading from HTTP has always been messy, specially for big files. The FTP API been always rock solid.
Edit: Apparently the Gopher API is also still available!
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/wininet/n...
and even has websites!
In January 2020, Veronica indexed 395 gopher servers,[16] within which it indexed approximately 4.5 million unique selectors. http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher/0/v2/vstat
It was known to some at my university (or maybe just me) pronounced as "Srk Dok Ik Ak Uk".
There was a time where you could replace “www” for “ftp” and in most occasions there would be a file listing!
this reminds me of poking around on my ISP's shell server to find warez drops other people had put there.
... now I can smell magic: the gathering cards for some reason.
+++ATH
Same. One of the first places I downloaded software in the mid 1990s
Maybe it is just that it was a different life and therefore it seems like that long ago?