They will still be able to find them through our web interface to CVS. Maybe they should speak to you about an upgrade...
Interested parties wil observe that there aren't any earlier releases than 4.5 listed on drupal.org. Our policy was always to support the latest two releases. If we do support, then we offer tarballs, if we don't we don't.
Unless something better comes up, I will remove the files tomorrow.
No, you won't. I don't remember having deleted _any_ old releases. When did this become a policy? When where the other old releases deleted? Who decided this? IMO, it is better to keep old releases around. People with a clue know that these might be insecure. This is such basic knowledge that believing otherwise is almost insulting. If you deleted old releases (without asking), you deleted the original Drupal 1.0.0 and Drupal 2.0.0 release. These were not in CVS yet. I hope that these are still around! As I mentioned before, with enough people to help, I'd be happy to commit patches to the DRUPAL-4-5 and DRUPAL-4-6 branch. Whether it is officially maintained or not. -- Dries Buytaert :: http://www.buytaert.net/