Around two decades ago, I did this, but I can't seem to figure it out now. I think Apache requires a directive - best in a <Directory>
container - else it thinks opening up file permissions is a configuration error, but I don't know how to do it today.
To clarify, what I want to do is point a link to a directory with no html files and let the user browse the files that are there and download, "read," but with no write access. If it's in that directory, it's there to be read by anyone, just no new files and no changes to existing files.