The shareware archives have been around on the Internet long before there was much of a commercial presence. Even so, they continue to be an excellent source of software. These archives were typically available by FTP and spawned one of the first Internet finding-aid databases, archie. The old text-based archie and its more graphical descendants are still a useful database for finding files by name. VSL originated in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Mirror sites are now available all over the world.
The VSL features several different databases of software. The display of the results demonstrates the significant improvements that have occurred on the Internet. After choosing a specific file to retrieve, multiple sites are listed where the file can be found. In addition, just select the hypertext link and the file will start transferring. As with archie, the most recent version number of a particular program may take a while to find its way into the database.