[HN Gopher] Retiring Tucows Downloads ___________________________________________________________________ Retiring Tucows Downloads Author : andrewdutton Score : 297 points Date : 2021-01-21 18:36 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (tucows.com) (TXT) w3m dump (tucows.com) | nevster wrote: | Well that's one less email I'll be getting every week - the | "Weekly Statistics Report" for downloads of my software from | tucows. | | As below: | | "You receive weekly download and CPC statistics because you are a | Tucows ARC Subscriber. If you no longer wish to receive this | communication, please login to ARC, enter the Profile Manager and | uncheck the box marked "Weekly mailings. | | Files: weekly_report_29299_20210110004906-20210117004906.zip" | degenerate wrote: | The article doesn't link to the Tucows Downloads Archive, for | whatever reason it only links to the archive.org homepage. | | Here's the direct link: https://archive.org/details/tucows | | It also appears that the archive wasn't manually reviewed; some | items are just screenshots, and others are unrelated to software | at all. | | Example (mildly nsfw): | https://archive.org/details/tucows_71077_Sung_Hi_Lee_2 | ardy42 wrote: | > The article doesn't link to the Tucows Downloads Archive, for | whatever reason it only links to the archive.org homepage. | | > Here's the direct link: https://archive.org/details/tucows | | > It also appears that the archive wasn't manually reviewed; | some items are just screenshots, and others are unrelated to | software at all. | | I'm really glad they went through the trouble of even doing | that. They didn't have to. | | A lot of it's probably only good for nostalgia, before it's | totally forgotten without much loss; but as someone who | recently spent a bunch of time trying to track down 90s FTP | site mirrors chasing a vague memory of a game, I appreciate it. | romwell wrote: | >and others are unrelated to software at all. | | Your example is software. | | It is a "screensaver", a program that displays something other | than a static image on the screen when the computer is idle | (which prevented CRT burn-in). | | Those used to be popular back in the day, and long after few | people had CRTs around. | rzzzt wrote: | I, ahem, had to look into this as a matter of intellectual | curiosity -- there is an archive file in the "DOWNLOAD OPTIONS" | section which holds the .scr Windows screensaver file: | https://archive.org/download/tucows_71077_Sung_Hi_Lee_2 | | (On another note, .scr-s are just renamed .exe-s, and it was a | highly questionable choice to download and run those in their | heyday as well.) | ars wrote: | Maybe email them with your findings? They to care about | history, maybe they'll be receptive to fixing the issues. | mdtancsa wrote: | But where will I download TCPMan and Trumpet Winsock from now??? | Slartie wrote: | first thought: What, Tucows still existed? | | _clicks on link_ | | second thought: That's not Tucows! Where is the logo with the two | cows??? | dceddia wrote: | Wow, end of an era. I guess it realistically ended a while ago, | but I remember downloading stuff from Tucows when I was a kid | playing around on the internet with dialup. | | I was really surprised to learn recently that they own Ting (the | cell phone provider) and big domain-related businesses like eNom | and Hover. Looks like they're doing just fine. | d23 wrote: | Reminds me of download.com and how that was such a go-to site for | me. I still have that in my muscle memory when I open a new tab, | along with a few others from my childhood. | TtEdN7jwT wrote: | I remember downloading x-files windows 98 themes when I was a kid | on dialup on weekends. good times. Also surprised it still | exists. was a great time to be into computers. | [deleted] | IronWolve wrote: | I use to browse tucows and freshmeat and seeing what new software | people released, was fun to see what people created. Just a nice | updated list of new applications. | | Now I have no idea what people are creating unless they post to a | few forums I follow, so limited. | cecida wrote: | Downloading Winamp from Tucows so I could listen to illegally | downloaded NOFX mp3s. The good old days when the WWW was so new | and exciting for me. | tpmx wrote: | > We're pleased to say that much of the software and other assets | that made up the Tucows Downloads library have been transferred | to our friends at the Internet Archive for posterity. | | The usage of the word "much" makes it seem like IA crawled most | of the archive, "probably". | | @ Elliot Noss: | | The real classy way to shut down something as historically | important as this would be to transfer a 100% (edit: ~100%) dump | to the IA. | | (Hoping to be disproved.) | codazoda wrote: | Alas, my app listing for ButtonWiz is gone (maybe I removed it | years ago). It was listed in Windows Magazine as one of the top | 10 shareware programs sometime around 1998. | | That makes it sound bigger than it was, the Top 10 list was a | small 1/4 page article that appeared in a bunch of issues. | janfoeh wrote: | Has your app been around for longer than '98? The screenshots | I've found look familiar. | | If it was available around, say, '94 or '95, I am almost | positive I had it installed at the time I started messing | around with the Compuserve Homepage Builder... | paxys wrote: | Sites like this have a long tail problem. Yes doing a 100% dump | would be best, but 90% of it is likely stuff that hasn't been | accessed in years and never will again. So from a resourcing | point of view it is better to save "most" than none at all. | stormbrew wrote: | And yet, all is still better than most. The IA's entire point | of existence is to preserve that long tail stuff that doesn't | get preserved otherwise, and they certainly currently hold on | to things that are far less useful than literally anything on | tucows was (for eg. a website I worked on in 1995 that | probably only had a few hundred visitors _even then_ ). | | I hope this is just soft wording. | tpmx wrote: | > I hope this is just soft wording. | | Yeah, I hope that too. Maybe everything except 0.01% | _really_ problematic content has been transferred to the | IA. | tpmx wrote: | I guess I'm mostly concerned about an authoritative dump from | those first years until 1996/1997 or so, probably less than 1 | GB. | cbhl wrote: | I wonder if someone still has a copy of the Tucows CD-ROMs | from those days? (Since most folks were still on dial-up | and everything.) | jayzalowitz wrote: | Speaking as a person who faced this, licensing concerns are | probably driving the mostiness. | tpmx wrote: | Sure - I'd just like to make sure. So much early content has | been deleted from history for no reason at all, really. If | there's been a serious effort to save at least the early | content from the 1990s I'd be super happy. If everything | minus problematic content has been saved, I'd be even | happier. | aurizon wrote: | Yes, I went from audio coupled 120 baud BBS in 1983 to the 56K by | 1993 and loved Tucows when they emerged. Many happy years spent | learning at their knee - as others have said, Thanks, Tucows - | live long and prosper in whatever internet sea you now swim | in.... | soheil wrote: | tucows and download.com were the "app stores" of the web before | the walled gardens of the big companies today. You could | distribute your app to one of these sites and have it be | automatically syndicated to thousands of other download sites. | This is how distributed web worked. We're making the web more | centralized and it's not just social media and youtube. | strictnein wrote: | Yeah. Plus you'd have FTP sites that would mirror a variety of | sources too. Now Chrome has removed FTP support completely. | imoverclocked wrote: | It's gone the way of the gopher! | gruez wrote: | Is there any meaningful difference between a ftp server and a | http server with directory listing enabled? | oriolid wrote: | With http you lose all the fun with active/passive FTP and | tricks to get around firewalls. Though stateful firewalls | already ruined it. | [deleted] | xtracto wrote: | IIRC at least initially the FTP had some special modes to | transfer binary data, whereas HTTP was not as efficient. | And of course, HTTP was meant to be "pull only" whereas FTP | had upload capabilities too. | caf wrote: | The 'binary mode' of FTP just meant _not_ to translate | line endings or potentially character set, in opposition | to 'text mode'. | | The advantage with HTTP wasn't efficiency, it was that | resuming interrupted downloads was typically possible | with FTP but not HTTP (because ranged GET took a long | while to get support in both servers and clients). | kevincox wrote: | > Now Chrome has removed FTP support completely. | | You can just as effectively have HTTP sites that are simple | listings of available software. I don't think FTP removal is | really relevant here except for nostalgia. | Spivak wrote: | HTTP is one layer too low to replace FTP. HTTP can provide | the transport but not the application semantics. We would | have to agree on a protocol that uses HTTP to replace FTP. | kevincox wrote: | That is a fair point. WebDAV seems to provide the listing | and update semantics that you are looking for. WebDAV is | widely supported by webservers so I think it is a great | replacement for FTP. | sub7 wrote: | Disagree. FTP as a protocol made self hosting all kinds of | things much easier. We could soon live in a world where | people self host their own data powered by protocols that | will borrow heavily from FTP. | PurpleFoxy wrote: | Hardly. You can install Apache and drop your files in it | and the default settings make it look pretty much like an | FTP listing. | spijdar wrote: | Did it? I've always had more trouble throwing up quick | FTP servers vs a quick "python3 -m http.server" for a | throwaway HTTP server. | core-questions wrote: | Gemini says hello! | sub7 wrote: | Hello! If only protocols weren't treated as cash cows | technofiend wrote: | FTP has some interesting features not found in straight | HTTP such as charset conversion and my favorite the HOST | command. HOST was the escape valve for commands you needed | run that weren't implemented in the FTP protocol itself. | I'm sure it's a terrible vulnerability now but it was fun | to use and see what you could make a remote machine do. | ryandrake wrote: | I wish "removing features" wasn't such a popular thing for | software companies. I mean I understand the cost of having | complexity but is it REALLY that bad to just keep an | unmaintained feature going that people use? | PurpleFoxy wrote: | There is no way to keep an unmaintained feature in. They | will break so fast and there is no point keeping a broken | feature in. Just download an FTP client. | ergo14 wrote: | You do have to maintain features, fix security issues, | refactor surfaces get smaller, even unused - bitrotting | code generates at least some work. | core-questions wrote: | Well, now that QA is a mature process and people expect | tests on every single thing, it's more "expensive" to keep | a feature around, as you have to keep on testing it. | jagged-chisel wrote: | It's not that bad ... right up until someone finds a | security problem involving said feature, and the original | code authors have left. | reiichiroh wrote: | Handango and some others that I forget were the equivalent for | the handheld Palm PDA. | renewiltord wrote: | They were such shit though, with the fake download buttons and | everything. | yosito wrote: | I remember a Tucows before the fake download button. But as a | kid I definitely downloaded a virus or two on my parent's | computer. | snoshy wrote: | It must have been a big reason why these sites fell to | irrelevance so quickly. And to think of the missed | opportunities... | cogman10 wrote: | Those didn't come till they started pumping the site with | banners. From there, malware assholes figured out they could | advertise with a duplicate "download" button and get a | healthy number of clicks (certainly got me more than once). | | They went to shit, but didn't start out that way until they | started to try and fund their site through a shit ton of ads. | | That was a dark day for the internet. Thank goodness for ad | blockers. | jaredsohn wrote: | Some related obscure nostalgia - I used to like downloading games | from Happy Puppy. | | https://web.archive.org/web/20000815211217/http://www.happyp... | | "Happy Puppy was launched on Valentine's Day 1995, establishing | itself as the first-ever commercial games site. It was an | overnight success and has been the leading gaming lifestyle | publication on the web ever since." | | Related in the sense that it was another site I would download | software from in that era. Disappeared in 2006. | bityard wrote: | I remember Happy Puppy. Although the thing I remember most is | that I won a free 56k 3Com (nee US Robotics) external serial | modem from them just by entering my name and address into a | sweepstakes on the main page. It just showed up in the mail one | day. It was a nice upgrade from our winmodem. My mom was sure | it was some kind of scam. | comprev wrote: | Buying an external 56k US Robotics modem was a giant leap | when I was a teenager. It opened up the internet as I only | had a winmodem at the time and RedHat 7.3 didn't play nice. | bitwize wrote: | I remember HappyPuppy back when it was run by Jennifer Diane | Reitz, who sold it off in 1995 or 1996 and whose career since | has been... interesting, to say the least. | | She changed the background to one of the puppy mascot peeing on | the Communications Decency Act, back when the "Blue Ribbon | Campaign" was a thing. | felixr wrote: | Oh wow. I have not heard of or seen tucows for ages. The last | time i visited their page must have been 15 years ago because it | looked like | https://web.archive.org/web/20050715014500/http://www.tucows... | therealmarv wrote: | Used Tucows as most reliable source for downloading software for | Windows back in the days (I think I did not trusted e.g. | download.com). Will remember all the cows on the early internet | days ;) | Octopuz wrote: | I still have my 'official mirror' T-shirt from Tucows (1994?) | jbverschoor wrote: | tucows, jumbo, and x2ftp.oulu.fi were my goto places :-) | cosmodisk wrote: | Wow.Just wow.The last time I was on their website was probably | nearly 20 years ago. No way I would have imagined they not only | exist but also hiring. Kind of glad they pivoted to other areas. | | [Edit]: I occasionally cover tech stocks in my spare time- this | is definitely one I'll write about! | artificial wrote: | Excellent run! It's been ages since I've downloaded things from | Tucows, mainly late 90s and early 00s. The era of PlanetQuake and | all the other sites. Hmm, off to the IA for a nostalgia browse... | xyzal wrote: | ... and IE for a nostalgia browser | Consultant32452 wrote: | Let's not get carried away. | comprev wrote: | PlanetQuake... the nostalgia is running through my veins! Not | heard that name in two decades. | Scoundreller wrote: | > Old sites are a maintenance challenge and therefore a risk. | | Hard disagree unless you want/need to update it. They've moved it | to internet archive, so I'm happy, but still a dumb statement. | Sohcahtoa82 wrote: | Updates are going to be a requirement if you care at all about | security. | | New vulnerabilities are being found in the most popular web | servers on a regular basis. | gmiller123456 wrote: | Even if the software it was running on never had a bug finding, | the hardware would eventually fail and it'd have to be updated | to run on modern software. Coupled with the fact that bugs do | pop up in operating systems, web servers, etc, it is no free to | maintain. The Internet Archive screen scrapes everything and | just saves the pages you see, but even that isn't free or | trivial if you don't already have the software. | Scoundreller wrote: | > The Internet Archive screen scrapes everything and just | saves the pages you see, but even that isn't free or trivial | | That's what I'm suggesting: you run a big screen scrape job, | disable the search and any other forms (review entry or | comments) and host that. At the end of the day, you have an | unchanged archive running on your existing www server. | | At least that's how I've kept up old stuff that isn't popular | anymore but still pulls in enough visitors and ads to cover | costs. | [deleted] | tehlike wrote: | Depending on the underlying infrastructure. | | Unless you freeze the infrastructure too, this is incorrect. | canadianfella wrote: | 12 hour downloads of 7mb Paint Shop Pro trial... | samsquire wrote: | There was something magical about this era when I was a child | downloading gameboy emulators like No$GBA. | | I miss download.com | | Is there fewer people making desktop software nowadays? It seems | there is less software available. It's also very hard to be | profitable and monetize software. | codazoda wrote: | I hated Download.com. It was buying up all my favorite download | sites of the era and shutting them down without integrating | their features. I think SoftSeek was my favorite and I'm hard | pressed to find even a screenshot of it these days. | | Off to look. | p1mrx wrote: | Yes, I was late '90s downloading enthusiast, and SoftSeek was | the best one, particularly because every app had a | screenshot. | | https://web.archive.org/web/19991118153527/http://www.softse. | .. | oriolid wrote: | > Is there fewer people making desktop software nowadays? | | Yes. Developing native desktop apps is more work (Win32 and | Cocoa, who even knows those? you'll have to implement the app | in both) and these days you'll have to go through the app | signing bureaucracy even if you're not using app stores. And | good luck with the monetization, especially if you're not | distributing through app store or other and paying a huge share | for it. | arkitaip wrote: | I feel like native desktop development has stagnated a lot in | the past 10 years. But Electron and other frameworks have | enabled hundreds of desktop software that are basically web | tech based. | Sohcahtoa82 wrote: | And all those frameworks add so much bloat. | | Windows Calculator now consumes 12 MB of RAM. Sure, 12 MB is | nothing when systems have 8+ GB, but if you think about the | fact that it hasn't really changed much since Windows 3.1, | you have to wonder why it takes a couple orders of magnitude | more memory without having significantly more functionality. | | I bet if DOOM were to be written today, even using the same | assets, it would be a 2 GB install that consumed 4 GB of RAM | while running. | wiremine wrote: | This is the worst part of the internet: Tucows was such a bit | part of life for so many people, and now it's just... gone. We | have the internet archive, which is great, but it feels like | there should be a way to highlight touchstones these sites. | dimator wrote: | Well, in this way, the internet is just like real life. How | many stores in your hometown have lasted 20, 30 years? It's | hard and it sucks losing them, even though they might not be | part of your life anymore. They were touchstones to someone's | past. | | My favorite little bookstore was called Readmore, it's been | gone for 20 years, but every time I see the GNC in it's old | location, I still get nostalgic. Part of life I guess. | disgrunt wrote: | Tucows isn't gone. They're the second largest domain registrar | in the world. They run OpenSRS and Hover, for example. They | also run Ting. | selimthegrim wrote: | Ting was sold to DISH in September. They may have kept the | ISP part. | richardwhiuk wrote: | It's a joint venture now apparently. | ChrisArchitect wrote: | The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software - wow internet | history. I forgot that TUCOWS even stood for that | canada_dry wrote: | Back from the days when hotmail.com stood for HTML mail. | ChrisArchitect wrote: | bunch of years before that... but wait, did hotmail really | mean that?! Not sure I've ever heard that! Or at least also | forgotten that. Feel like when MS acquired they didn't | promote/brand it like that so the HTML connection was lost | (even tho it was obviously a website/webmail etc) :) | _joel wrote: | Where will I be able to download my winsock.dll apps now though? | laumars wrote: | I didn't even realise Tucows were still around. Man I loved that | site in the 90s. | | So long and thanks for all the fish :'( | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | > Old sites are a maintenance challenge and therefore a risk. | Maintaining the Tucows Downloads site pulls people away from the | work that moves our businesses forward. | | This is the larger tragedy. | devmunchies wrote: | do you even use their download site? nobody does anymore. To | keep it up would be hoarding. We can archive screenshots and | move on. | [deleted] | rado wrote: | The second best thing after print magazines' CD-ROMs... also | extinct :-< | obscura wrote: | Agreed! I used to love exploring those discs, which were jam- | packed with new demos and utilities, or new games or add-ons | for existing ones. | firecall wrote: | It's funny how you never know when your last visit to a site will | be! | | One day it's your go-to site for things, the next it's not on | your radar. | | Maybe search engines, mobile, and app stores all contributed to | changing the . | throwaway5752 wrote: | "The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software" ... For a company | that's now the 2nd large domain name registrar, started and sold | a successful MVNO, and runs a fiber internet service it's been a | crazy ride. I had no idea the download site was still up. That | and Sourceforge were so important at one point. | pjmlp wrote: | Now that is a name I had almost forgotten about. | | Like many I had plenty of downloads from there, back in the day, | on the university connection. | danans wrote: | Though it is now headquartered in Toronto, it is interesting to | note that Tucows was originally founded in Flint Michigan, the | only internet company I'm aware of that comes from there. | josh2600 wrote: | Elliott Noss is super smart and humble. Left a huge impression on | me when I met him way back in the day as a youngster. He had | nothing to prove at all, just super bright and very fun to talk | to; I met him at a tradeshow and he spent 30 minutes with me just | because he thought our product was cool. | ryeguy_24 wrote: | 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. | user3939382 wrote: | I register my domains through hover.com to support Tucows. It | happens to be an excellent registrar. | ai_ja_nai wrote: | I remember downloading GetRight download manager from there. | Aeons ago, truly Internet 1.0. | pmiller2 wrote: | Speaking of nostalgia, I remember downloading Trumpet Winsock | from Tucows way back when.... | solomonb wrote: | Me too! I miss the era of the internet that Tucows represents. | MisterTea wrote: | I miss the walnut creek days of ftp.cdrom.com. Many an id | demo and FreeBSD isos downloaded. Before that I knew of them | from actually buying their CD's in the mid 90's before we had | the internet. | mdtancsa wrote: | my fingers still have muscle memory for "ftp ftp.uwasa.fi" | which I think pre dated cdrom.com (for me anyways) | alfiedotwtf wrote: | Memories! | | There was a time where you could replace "www" for "ftp" | and in most occasions there would be a file listing! | chrisdhal wrote: | I was a maintainer of a FAQ that was posted to | news.answers, which in turn was mirrored at Walnut Creek. | They would send maintainers free CDs of the archive | periodically. Good times. | core-questions wrote: | I remember getting Windows 95 on the Internet, not having a | browser, but having the command line FTP client built in | and FTPing to cdrom.com to download a copy of Netscape so | as to be able to get browsing. | cairoshikobon wrote: | Windows has and still does an excellent built-in FTP API | also that was very handy. It works even on Windows 95 all | the way to Windows 10. | | 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 | meepmorp wrote: | I still have my copy of Walnut Creek's FreeBSD 2.2.3 | distribution, a double CD set with Beastie on the front. | And we had the internet back then, it was just over a 28.8 | modem. | xtracto wrote: | Haha me too! It was such an amazing thing for me, a 12 | year old in 1994 _in Mexico_ to actually receive the | FreeBSD CDs with all the nice paraphernalia (beastie | stickers and whatnot) on it. A friend of my family bought | it for me because he was happy I was into computers at | that age. | pxlpshr wrote: | Same!! So many fond memories of the early web. I miss what was | that "new frontier" feeling. | ryeguy_24 wrote: | How do we get that feeling again? Where is the newness today? | I miss that feeling so much. | alfiedotwtf wrote: | So say we all | NDizzle wrote: | Yep. It was one of your first stops after you reformatted | Windows. Like you, I haven't heard about them in a long time. I | haven't thought about them in a long time, either. Guess that | means Windows got more stable? I don't reformat anymore... | cogman10 wrote: | Adding windows defender by default has gone a LONG ways in | fixing windows. | benbristow wrote: | Well Windows 7 (and Vista?) had it by default but it was | pretty useless. Basically a user-friendly GUI to the | firewall with very basic anti-virus. Microsoft released | Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) which was the precursor | to what we see now built into 10. It's come a long way. | markandrewj wrote: | This brings up memories for me also. I was under the impression | that Tucows was founded in Canada though, because their | headquarters is in Toronto. Although most people know them for | their download site, they have also always been a pretty big | domain registrar. According to wikipedia, they are the second | biggest at the moment. | SummerlyMars wrote: | A former coworker of mine went to work there, and my immediate | thought upon learning of this was "The download site?" | | 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. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucows | mikejarema wrote: | Union Square Ventures invested in them a few years back, and | blogged about their rationale and some info on where Tucows | is/has been headed as a business: | | https://www.usv.com/writing/2017/02/tucows/ | slg wrote: | I have used Hover for years. I don't really do anything too | complex with them, but I have no complaints which is | basically the best endorsement I can giver for a domain | registrar. | [deleted] | quietbritishjim wrote: | > In 2000, Tucows acquired Linux Weekly News. | | _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. | | [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/264980/ | | [2] https://lwn.net/Articles/265813/ | corbet wrote: | That was a while ago at this point, back when the download | site was still a significant part of what they did. | | 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. | snoshy wrote: | Reading TFA, that was exactly the sense I got: a wistful | announcement that a cherished part of the Internet was | maintained for years beyond most of its users even | noticed, and is being closed down. It seems readily | apparent from their actions and words that they truly | seemed to care about Tucows Downloads, whatever it might | be worth financially. | | 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. | breck wrote: | Seeing "TUCOWS" was like smelling something I hadn't | smelt in decades. I barely remember what it was, just | have positive associations with that word from my child | hood. Very cool to read that I'm not alone in that. | selimthegrim wrote: | They did sell their Ting Mobile division to DISH the other | month though, so some retrenching has apparently been in | order. | Svperstar wrote: | >Tucows was a huge part of my childhood from 10 to 18 years | old. | | Same. One of the first places I downloaded software in the mid | 1990s | tomjen3 wrote: | For me it seems like a decade or two, but that can't be right | because I haven't had internet that long. | | Maybe it is just that it was a different life and therefore it | seems like that long ago? | BuildTheRobots wrote: | They've been hosting downloads since 1993. That's more than | two decades, and certainly a couple of lifetimes ago for me | :) | tambourine_man wrote: | Tucows and, the more Mac focused, Version Tracker, where a huge | part of the early Web. | | Besides finding new stuff (which was awesome), in those days you | had to manually check in those sites to see if there were new | versions of your apps. I'd be very surprised if you told me back | then that we're all OK with apps calling home to check for | updates regularly. | dmurray wrote: | > I'd be very surprised if you told me back then that we're all | OK with apps calling home to check for updates regularly. | | I think we'd have thought of that as a great development. "In | the future, you'll automatically get bug fixes and new features | in your programs as they're released." What's not to like? | After all, you already trust the developer (the programs were | not typically open source). | | The justified distrust we have now for software vendors | shipping "features" that benefit them rather than us came much | later. | tambourine_man wrote: | Trust changes. Software owners do as well. It was also common | back in the day to keep running old versions of your apps for | whatever reason. It's much harder and sometimes not possible | these days. | obscura wrote: | Haven't thought about Tucows in many years... I used to love | exploring it to find new software to try out. There were so many | interesting utilities and such to enhance Windows 95/98. Would | love to give it one last browse. Ah well! Thanks for the good | times, Tucows. | war1025 wrote: | I own several domains that I registered through Hover.com . | | I noticed the billing statement always comes through as from | Tuwcows Corp, but I didn't realize Tuwcows was it's own thing | that existed apart from just Hover. | | According to Wikipedia, its been around since 1993, so a relative | dinosaur on the internet. Wild. | anthony_barker wrote: | One of the early success stories in Toronto based internet | companies (besides ISPs). | | Hover is pretty good. It looks like their fiber business is | growing too. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-21 23:00 UTC)