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)