Re: [GNU-linux-libre] [gnu.org #1262331] (inactive Linux distributions)

[Ivan Zaigralin]

This is my understanding as well. In a way, www subdomain is a total nuisance. 
It is entirely traditional, but now every web user expects a redirect, 
consciously or not, so that they can use example.com in lieu of 
www.example.com, and still end up in the same place. But this doesn't "just 
happen" on the DNS level; this is an explicit entry/redirect, and it always 
has to be set up (although many web hosting providers will typically do it for 
their clients). You can google (yes, this puppy is ready for genericide) for 
"www domain redirect" to see countless reports of neophyte webmasters seeing 
the problem for the first time and asking WTF.

For example, these are different:

http://ntp.org/
http://www.ntp.org/

This is the generic behavior: www.ntp.org is a different domain name, and it 
may well be bound to some other IP address in the DNS, or even be undefined.

So in conclusion I would recommend citing URLs provided by the respective 
distribution maintainers. Appending or removing "www." without their explicit 
approval is simply wrong, and coercing maintainers to register and redirect a 
www subdomain would be even more uncalled for.

On Wednesday, January 24, 2018 17:25:43 Julie Marchant wrote:
> I get the impression that the whole trend of using the "www" subdomain
> came from Usenet hierarchies. Is that accurate?
> 
> In any case, many websites these days don't do that anymore, and even
> when they did it was never necessary. So yeah, it's inaccurate to say
> that websites' URLs *should* have that prefix. Just optional fluff some
> people like to use.
> 
> --
> Julie Marchant
> https://onpon4.github.io
> 
> Protect your emails with GnuPG:
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