It is with great sadness that I just posted the news of the discontinuation of the BigPond Files service on the news page. The site will be formally shut down at the end of June.
Mammoth developed and deployed that site in around a month after BigPond decided to remove Linux ISOs from the old GameArena site due to disk space limitations. We did this back in 2003, and we have been faithfully maintaining all aspects of the site since then.
I handled most of the day-to-day issues of BigPond Files – processing file requests, making sure the latest versions of the more popular software packages were available, and support – and have done the best job possible to try to get as much cool stuff as possible available for BigPond broadband users.
While the site has never been hugely popular (it’s only linked in one tiny spot on the BigPond site and thus it’s pretty hard to find – it doesn’t even feature the ‘green dot’ that indicates it is unmetered!), it has long served a number of users interested in open source software and I would like to think it will be missed by these customers.
Thanks to all those users who supported the site – everyone that downloaded, submitted a file request, and sent through compliments and kind words about the service.
Once the site is gone, BigPond will be one of (the only?) major ISPs in Australia that does not maintain some sort of repository of open source software for its users.
So long and thanks for all the bytes.
Very dissapointing IMHO, I used to use this for Rev3, Geeknights and TWIT podcasts as well as all sorts of freeware based programs. Personally it just makes me feel like I’m being ripped off more and more by Bigpond now (I have no choice in broadband provider).
You got a few grumpy emails from me in the past, and whilst I may have never sounded like it, thanks for the work in having the site up to day.
Personally it was never popular because it was never promoted, so much so when there were problems with metering, some of the people on the phones had no idea that it existed! I think that was more the problem with it, it was not promoted. I think if more people knew about it, it would have been extremely successful, but Bigpond didn’t seem to want it to be a success.
Profoundly sorry this has gone. It was a major service to us users, spectacularly well administered with timely and accurate links. I used it particularly for accessing Mandriva linux iso downloads, which were rapidly used by numerous other users also.
Anything we can co to resurrect it??
My considerable thanks for a service extremely well implemented and faithfully maintained.
Tony
Nigel: Grumpy emails are a part of handling with support; if it bothered me I would have had to give up many moons ago :) I definitely appreciated your file requests though and I’m sure many other BPFiles users did.
I hope any reason you had to be grumpy though almost certainly was a result of BP policy about not mirroring certain things rather than me making mistakes :)
Tony: Best thing you can do is to add your voice to the comments on Whirlpool in the main thread and make sure you’ve emailed the CEO etc as others have done.
This great service will be sadly missed. Thanks for maintaining the repo, it has been a excellent. The linux mirror was great. So sad to see it go, but happy to see they unmetered AARNet’s mirror :D Just need rev3 unmetered :P
^^^^ I agree, we are getting ripped of by bigpond more and more, but the trouble is they have a corner of the market to themselves with there wireless plans and all that, so some people have no choice of provider, so bigpond will always have customers. It stinks that they would take this away, i only come across this blog because i was searching for the files repository…… what next ?
David..
Stumbled across your website..
I know this is a bit late..
Just a note of thanks to u for taking such good care of the file.bigpond site back then.
AT that time access to the file library utterly changed my web life.
Any & every explanation offered by Telstra re the shut down was patently pathetic. I know about the AARN site..fine, but where are the podcasts etc..
How long before AARN folds due to the support required in maintaining such a service. AARN will not have or be able to support the same offerings and has no obligation to do so.
IIRC we actually were PAYING for that site as part of our subscriptions.
Hopefully a rethink in time. There were many many PO’d users. Last residue of goodwill flushed away by stupid shorttermism.
Thanks once again. Enjoyed our brief contacts.
See you around.
Thanks for the kind words dude! Great to hear people still remember the service even a few months after it closed :)
I haven’t really followed the Aarnet move at all so don’t know how it is going; be interested to hear from people about it though (but I guess it’d just be Linux users:)