[gimp-web/wip/Jehan/issue-236-new-sponsor-page: 19/25] content: new mirror policy news.

[Jehan <jehanp src gnome org>]

commit 113821412e492dfe25a6562f9abafd2db86f268b
Author: Jehan <jehan girinstud io>
Date:   Sun Sep 12 13:11:41 2021 +0200

    content: new mirror policy news.

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+Title: GIMP's official mirrors and mirror policy
+Date: 2021-09-20
+Category: News
+Authors: Wilber
+Slug: official-mirror-policy
+Summary: "Support GIMP with a mirror"
+Status: draft
+
+As far as we could remember, organizations from all over the world have
+supported the GNU Image Manipulation Program by mirroring 🪞 our file
+downloads. This is important as we may have to sustain several dozens of
+thousands downloads a day.
+
+# Official mirrors (to publication day)
+
+The current list of official mirrors by alphabetical order:
+
+- Aalborg University
+- Academic Computer Club, Umeå University
+- Artfiles New Media GmbH
+- Astra ISP
+- CSC - IT Center for Science / FUNET
+- dogado GmbH
+- Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU)
+- Göttingen University and Max Planck Society
+- Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling UW, University of Warsaw
+- IP-Connect
+- Korea FreeBSD Users Group
+- Jaleco
+- Kumi Systems
+- Lysator ACS
+- Studenten Net Twente (SNT), the University of Twente
+- UKFast
+- University of Crete
+- University of Maryland, College Park
+- XMission
+
+The always-updated list is on a dedicated [sponsor page](/donating/sponsors.html).
+
+💌 **Thanks to all these organizations!**
+
+# What are official mirrors?
+
+We recently cleaned out our mirror list. The rules are:
+
+- Now we list exactly the mirrors verified by GNOME infrastructure team,
+  no more no less. Being verified by GNOME gives you rsync credentials
+  allowing faster and safer updates.
+  **See [below](#how-to-be-an-official-mirror) if you want in.**
+- Mirrors are not listed anymore in the [Downloads](/downloads/) page
+  since there is an automatic mirror rotation operating when clicking
+  the download button. Instead we have a dedicated
+  [Sponsors](/donating/sponsors.html) page, which means better
+  visibility to sponsoring mirrors, all the while simplifying the
+  download page which used to be over-crowded with information.
+- We display names of mirroring organization, for instance "*University
+  of XYZ*" with a link to the organization website, rather than just
+  URLs.
+
+*Note: we had more mirrors either listed on our former download page or
+who made reports of interest to be official mirrors across the
+years (back then our workflow was much more fuzzy). We sent messages to
+all of them but are not sure it reached the people in charge. If you
+wish to be part of the official list, help shoulder the download burden
+and be featured on our Sponsors page, it is still possible. Please look
+the procedure below.*
+
+# How to be an official mirror
+
+This is the same
+[procedure](https://wiki.gnome.org/Infrastructure/Mirrors) as GNOME
+mirrors, except you must explicitly ask to be a GIMP mirror:
+
+- Create a mirror request [on this
+  link](https://gitlab.gnome.org/Infrastructure/Infrastructure/issues/new?issuable_template=new-mirror)
+- Write in title and introduction that you want to be a mirror for GIMP
+  in particular
+- Add `/cc @Jehan` in the request description or in a comment
+- Fill the relevant fields
+- If you want a specific name and URL to be shown in the mirror sponsor
+  list, please write it explicitly in the report (otherwise we will
+  choose whatever organization name and URL seems the most relevant from
+  what you wrote down).
+- Once GNOME is done verifying your organization is trustworthy, they
+  will send you rsync credentials for syncing to the mirrors
+- There is nothing to do in particular to appear on the
+  [Sponsors](https://www.gimp.org/donating/sponsors.html) page which
+  will be synced at regular intervals through scripts. Yet it may take a
+  few days or even weeks at times. So don't worry if your organization
+  name does not appear immediately!
+
+🛈 We will check at random intervals that mirrors are updated quickly
+enough and that the data match for obvious security reasons.
+
+# Technicalities
+
+We used to list mirrors on
+[gimp.org/downloads/](https://www.gimp.org/downloads/) on a declarative
+basis. People wishing to download were encouraged to pick a mirror
+rather than the main download server.
+
+Years ago, we moved to an automatic mirror rotation through web
+redirections. In other words, any URL to `download.gimp.org/mirror/`
+automatically redirects to any of the official mirrors (our own download
+server included), hence lowering the burden on all servers without
+having people to manually pick a mirror in a boring list.
+
+Listing only GNOME-verified mirrors has the following advantages:
+
+- GNOME makes the background check to verify an organization is
+  trustworthy.
+- Mirrors get rsync credentials, enabling faster updates (instead of
+  through third-parties which may themselves sync from other third
+  parties, hence avoiding several-day delays).
+- Our team has an accurate list to check when we want to do security checks
+  for file presence and identity.
+- Only verified mirrors are added in the download rotation settings, which
+  means they are directly helping with the bigger chunk of downloads. It
+  is only normal for them to be featured more prominently.
+
+**Additionally to mirrors, we would like to thank the GNOME
+infrastructure team for their invaluable help!**