REBOL.ORG expired?
REBOL.ORG says domain expired on 4-17-2017. Anyone know if that valuable resource will be back online?
posted by: JackKort 20-Apr-2017/17:42:47-7:00
Sunanda, If you don't want to maintain it anymore, I'd be happy to take it over.
posted by: Nick 20-Apr-2017/21:01:43-7:00
Nick, I literally haven't touched (let alone maintained) rebol.org since the day that hostilefork insisted it must be owned by a trust. Did not want to stand in the way of progress. That was July-ish 2013, I think, in a paper delivered at the Montreal Recode conference. Not sure if the video of the paper delivery is online. The take-away notes are here: http://blog.hostilefork.com/media/rebol-state-union-july-2013/e-rebolus-unum.pdf I have no idea what the trust has done with the site - they have never contacted me. Similarly, I have no idea why it has been taken off line in the last week as I have not been the ISP's contact point for several years. (It would sometimes drop for weird technical reasons -- like the time they accidentally set our disk quota to ZERO BYTES). Suggest you contact the trust to offer your help — there is a wealth of valuable stuff on rebol.org, and it would be a shame to see it unavailable. Good luck!
posted by: Sunanda 21-Apr-2017/2:09:03-7:00
I'm glad the presentation is quoted directly, so thank you for that, Sunanda. But I think most people have a different takeaway. Rather than "rebol.org is down because HostileFork was prescient and made a nice case for how to prevent such things from happening", a more appropriate finger to point might be to the person who says: "I was the person behind rebol.org--the main point of contact who had continuity with it--but decided I wasn't going to lift a finger to try and help ensure it could have a future." No one here is working under ideal conditions. Some slack is needed. But given the known difficulty of organizing in this project--if you're kind of the only person who had the keys to the resource, and you have an obstructionist mentality, then you know the endgame. Exactly what has happened. :-/ People have tried to work on resources, even without having the domain or the scripts, and Chris has done some nice work: http://rebol.info We would have preferred an evolution of rebol.org, which could have new libraries living alongside the old links. I think everyone--personalities aside--wants the links for the script library to stay working. So the question on the table is, how to get there from here. I don't think the community has a problem paying the registrar fee, if it means we set it up. But could we please not be paying to buy the auction and instead just pay the late fee, or whatever?
posted by: Fork 21-Apr-2017/10:36:49-7:00
I am also stunned by this reasoning as if having a trust means for you that you could not be trusted?
posted by: iArnold 21-Apr-2017/13:46:25-7:00
I don't have any argument with anyone, would just like to get rebol.org reinstated and move along. If I can pay some bills or take care of maintaining a server, etc., I'm happy to do that.
posted by: Nick 21-Apr-2017/14:26:21-7:00
It is clear from the comments here… http://alarmingdevelopment.org/?p=766 ...that there was a plan to start work on a new approach to rebol.org as soon as actually during the Montreal conference: "we gonna do something about it at the upcoming conference" etc The Montreal plan has been the ONLY active dev plan for rebol.org since that date - the previous dev team stood aside so the new project could proceed unopposed. That’s full support, and trust. rebol.org is owned and paid for by Rebol Technologies. RT were (and remain) the only entity that could give the new dev team FTP and server-level access to the website. I have no information on whether the new dev team applied for that, or what happened if they did. Nick -- RT (i.e. probably Carl or Cindy) are the only people who can pay any outstanding fees to revive the current site: as already stated, it is registered to RT. If they won't or cant't do that, you might be able to put a reserve on the domain name and pick it up when it is released. Or start a new site with the best / most relevant of the old content, and a new domain name. I have a full backup of the site from approx July 2013 - but nothing more recent.
posted by: Sunanda 21-Apr-2017/15:06:19-7:00
I'd be happy to mirror the old content. I think the most important resources were the mailing list and AltME archives, as well as all the scripts, articles, comments, etc. It'd be a horrible shame to lose the history and knowledge contained in the several hundred thousand email and AltME messages.
posted by: Nick 21-Apr-2017/15:12:02-7:00
Isn't your hosting bill too high already with all these sites you keep up, Nick? @Sunanda, perhaps you stepped out of the way a little too fast and certainly too quiet ;-) I am certain this was not the meaning of putting up the trust. That should have been the organ that takes care of these payments, and securing access without being dependent of RT. You know how hard it is to contact RT these days.
posted by: iArnold 21-Apr-2017/16:40:04-7:00
Domains and hosting cost virtually nothing. That content is irreplaceable.
posted by: Nick 21-Apr-2017/21:10:03-7:00
@Sunanda, it may be that the content of rebol.org is safe for the moment, but assuming that it may not stay like that, are you able to upload the script library somewhere so that we can copy it to GitHub until we can find a day permanent location?
posted by: Graham 22-Apr-2017/23:33:29-7:00
@Graham - I know no more than you do. But I SUSPECT all that has happened is that the DOMAIN NAME has expired. I have no reason to assume that the ISP has deleted the site, or that there is any problem with the hosting. If Carl renews the domain name during the expiry grace period, the site could be up and running in moments. If he can't or won't, then someone with the ISP's credentials could (probably) access the server and retrieve all the latest content. The first choice to do that is the post-Montreal trust's team. If they can't or won't do that, I have a script library backup from approx July 2013. And it is likely that other people at least some of the more recent content. Happy to send someone a zip file of the script library that I have (approx 2 meg) if they want to do something with it. Other content on rebol.org: -- mailing list - I think I have a full backup. It is republished elsewhere anyway. Though those other websites do not always the added value threading or keyword indexes that rebol.org had. -- AltME archive - stopped being updated around Jul 2013. I have a backup copy from then. The update mechanism should still work to create a up-to-date archive --Articles - never were many. I have the backup from Jul 2013
posted by: Sunanda 23-Apr-2017/3:33:35-7:00
I looked up the latest IP address of Rebol.org on the dnshistory site. It is 216.184.2.32:80. I believe that rebol.org runs on a shared web server so it can only be accessed via the URL. To access the site, you need to specify http://rebol.org and get the URL to resolve to 216.184.2.32. On Unix based systems, you can do this by adding these entries to your /etc/hosts file: 216.184.2.32 rebol.org 216.184.2.32 www.rebol.org I don't know how to do this on a Windows system. I think it would be best to treat this as a window of opportunity to grab what you want whilst you still can.
posted by: Peter W A Wood 23-Apr-2017/4:04:51-7:00
If I remember correctly, Maxim wrote some scripts shortly after the Montreal conference that scraped the data from Rebol.org.
posted by: Peter W A Wood 23-Apr-2017/4:08:31-7:00
@sunanda, happy to grab a copy of the script library. I'm on a phone so can't try Peter's trick yet. My email is compkarori and I'm still with Gmail. Thanx
posted by: Graham 23-Apr-2017/5:02:22-7:00
@Graham -- file on the way to you. Thanks.
posted by: Sunanda 23-Apr-2017/5:26:05-7:00
It's late at night but I've uploaded the first 999 files from the zip archive @Sunanda kindly sent me. I didn't know about a 1000 file limit for one folder in github. See https://github.com/r3n/rebol.org
posted by: Graham 23-Apr-2017/6:09:16-7:00
I haven't heard any response from Carl or Cindy.
posted by: Nick 27-Apr-2017/2:07:05-7:00
Nick, if Carl wont / can't respond, we could easily create a new domain -eg Rebol-open.org and reset the site. Once something is up and running the community can decide what to do about it. IO am quite happy to look after the site while this is sorted, its not expensive to buy a domain and simple hosting service Regards David
posted by: David 27-Apr-2017/5:54:39-7:00
"...I'd be happy to mirror the old content..." Nick Thanks to Nick and all those willing toback up the site. Much appreciation.
posted by: Sam 27-Apr-2017/7:04:50-7:00
https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20170206105437/rebol.org They respect copyright of course, that could be an issue maybe.
posted by: Vasos 27-Apr-2017/7:22:56-7:00
rebol.com as well perhaps, as of 9:30 GMT, May 1?
posted by: Vasos 1-May-2017/6:36:32-7:00
This happened once before when Carl wasn't paying attention. My offer still stands to pay/maintain it all, if anyone knows another way to get in touch with him out in the fields of Sassenranch...
posted by: Nick 1-May-2017/17:40:36-7:00
Ijust tried accessing http://www.rebol.org/ and was able to view the home page, seems it is back online. (2-May-2017 IST: 11:59 A.M)
posted by: FeetDust 2-May-2017/2:30:03-7:00
Both rebol.com & org up again. Great resources. Thanks! Carl I guess?
posted by: Vasos 2-May-2017/4:52:37-7:00
I just scraped rebol.com to make sure there's a handy copy. Will do the same for rebol.org.
posted by: Nick 2-May-2017/22:52:45-7:00
Did you also get http://www.rebol.com/release-archive.html Nick?
posted by: iArnold 3-May-2017/10:02:33-7:00
I, too, am saving what I can from rebol.com, plus the scripts from rebol.org. I am in the process of doing the release archive but it is a one-at-a-time process because I don't know a faster way. I don't know exactly what to DO with them, but I will have them. Posting them somewhere seems to be a move of questionable legality. I wish Carl had been able to stick with R3 and get it to the level of completeness of R2, but with only him behind the operation, this whole issue would come up again eventually anyway. I predict that in the future, either Red will carry on the REBOL philosophy or some organization like Microsoft will "invent" a REBOL-like language and it will be hailed as a brilliant innovation. Carl will be sitting on his porch with a glass of wine, shaking his head.
posted by: Steven White 3-May-2017/17:30:53-7:00
iArnold, yep I got it :)
posted by: Nick 4-May-2017/23:57:58-7:00
I am suggesting that we approach Carl to take over Rebol.org for good. Nick, I have your name as willing to help and fund it. I've got two other names on Altme. We may have to pay someone to do some of the work though. Any other volunteers either to fund or to work?
posted by: Graham 11-May-2017/18:39:24-7:00
First pass at the rebol.org organisation. If you want to be removed or added, let me know. https://github.com/gchiu/rebol.org/blob/master/participants.MD
posted by: Graham 11-May-2017/22:37:19-7:00
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