This is an archived snapshot of W3C's public bugzilla bug tracker, decommissioned in April 2019. Please see the home page for more details.
The current validator download link is b0rk3n, and it's for validator only (not the sgml-lib tarball). How's about this: The download URI would point to <http://validator.w3.org/source/download/>, which would be a Apache-generated directory view. This would make the link less likely to bitrot.
Apache directory listings aren't valid markup so I'm boycotting them. When we switch to Apache 2.0 we might provide a custom module for this, but for now lets stay with a normal page and links (besides, I don't like the deep hierarchy of /source/download/). But having two tarballs, two+ RPMs, and two+ debs, etc. makes this a bit of a headache to maintain, I'll grant.
Hmm, I think if you don't get too fancy with the indexing, the indexes are valid HTML 3.2, cf. <http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/>. That one doesn't have charset set, but it, of course, can be added. BTW, I don't like the deep hierarchy either. But the situation where this actually becomes a problem are local installations. And now that I think about it, maybe the best way to solve this is to make source/index.html *always* point to v.w.o/source/index.html so that it wouldn't exist locally at all. Problem solved, I guess.
Terje, I'm adding you to Cc: of this one, I think 'zilla didn't send you mail about my comment yesterday. WDYT?
Oh, you were worried about local installations? No, I think it's wholly appropriate that the download links point to w3.org. Installing a tarball in the local htdocs/ would be rather wastefull.
I think it would be better (easier to maintain) to change not only the download links, but all links to source/ to point to v.w.o/source/. And exclude the htdocs/source dir entirely from local installations. This would mean hardcoding v.w.o/source/ into about.html, header.html, whatsnew.html and check. Ok?
Go for it... :-)
Done.