From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxt!mhuxi!mhuxj!cbosgd!mark
Newsgroups: net.news
Title: Re: Request for sitrep on net.sources
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.2997
Posted: Sunday, 16-Jan-83 18:37:21 EST
Received: Wed Jan 19 03:13:46 1983
References: <242@sdcsla.UUCP>

	1)  Roughly what areas of the net do not get net.sources?
There is no central database where this is kept track of.  Generally,
certain fringe areas of "the net" (e.g. USENET) don't get them,
and of course the entire part of the world which is not on USENET
doesn't get them.  (For example, certain newsgroups like unix-wizards
are gatewayed onto ARPANET mailing lists - the people on these mailing
lists seem to think that mailing lists are wonderful and news is a
silly idea; as a consequence they don't get net.sources.)

	2)  Typically why don't they?
Ignoring the non-USENET part of the world, the usual reason is a
that a 300 baud phone connection is their sole link to the world,
and all their news must come in through that bottleneck.  net.sources
was specifically made a separate newsgroup so they could shut off
the delivery of large things like source files.  Other possible
reasons include lack of disk space, unreliable connections, and
situations where all news is relayed by hand.  Finally, there are
a few sites that get only a very few newsgroups (e.g. the European
sites currently only get something like net.general, net.bugs, and
net.news) and typically net.sources is not on this list.

It is also possible that a site A may be downstream of another site B that
won't forward net.sources.  In this case, if A really wants the newsgroup,
they probably should look for another site to feed them news.

	3)  What is the official attitude to the failure of usenet for the
		second most important newsgroup?
Each site gets to pick the newsgroups they want.  If a site wanted
net.sources, they would get it.  If one user on a site wants something
and the system administrator has set things up to disallow it, it's
between those two, and since the SA pays the bills, chances are the
user will be told to request the file via mail.

	4)  What is the best alternative approved way of distributing sources?
net.sources is a good thing to do, if your source is small enough to
keep from overflowing half the disks on USENET and you want it to reach
lots of people.  However, advertising that you have the source (via
USENET or a flyer at USENIX or mass mailings or whatever) and having
people send you a tape to copy it onto is a more traditional method,
and works for bigger programs.  Another method is to place the program
in a known place on a few well known machines and letting people get it;
this requires cooperation from the SA's on those machines and frustrates
the half of the net that doesn't have a direct UUCP connection to
any of those machines.