downloads-brainstorming

Purpose

Many sites (Download.com, Tucows, SourceForge, etc.) provide software downloads, some shareware, some freeware, some open-source. To create a search index or similar across these sites would be difficult, as there is no standard markup.

Many other sites index such downloads, selectively, without providing them directly, for example PricelessWare.=

Relation to Appcasts

Appcasts (see appcast-brainstorming) provide a list of downloads, as well as release notes. An appcast microformat should probably make use of a downloads microformat which adds extra metadata to downloads, such as versions, OS, architecture, MD5/SHA1 checksums, DSA signatures, and so on.

Better to merge these ideas and have one microformat, perhaps using hAtom for the "cast" part. Andy Mabbett

See Also

• rel-license (rel=copyright for copyright license? rel=license whatiscopyright.org?)
• hash-examples
• appcast-brainstorming and appcast-examples
• DOAP and hDOAP
• Google Code Search (not a downloads search, but similar)