Tucows announced the retiring of its Tucows Downloads, a huge archive of mostly shareware and other sofware going back to 1993, the early years of the commercial internet.
The Tucows acronym stood for “The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software.”
There is no doubt that the original role of Tucows is not in alignment with the present company.
Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows, announced the end of an era and Tucows Dowloads:
We have made the difficult decision to retire the Tucows Downloads site. We’re pleased to say that much of the software and other assets that made up the Tucows Downloads library have been transferred to our friends at the Internet Archive for posterity.
For the past several years, history, well sentimentality, has been the only reason to keep Tucows Downloads around. We talked about shutting the site down before. Most seriously in 2016 when instead, we decided to go ad-free, keeping the site up as a public service.
Today is different. Tucows Downloads is old. Old sites are a maintenance challenge and therefore a risk. Maintaining the Tucows Downloads site pulls people away from the work that moves our businesses forward.
Tucows Downloads has had an incredible run. Retiring it is the right move but that doesn’t alter the fact that it will always hold a special place in hearts and our story. We’re thankful to the thousands of software developers who used Tucows Downloads to get their software in front of millions of people, driving billions of downloads over more than 25 years.
For the full announcement, click here.
RIP, Tucows Downloads. 🙁
Tucows Downloads in 1996
