From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!cmcl2!philabs!sdcsvax!phonlab!sdcsla!draper Newsgroups: net.news Title: Request for sitrep on net.sources Article-I.D.: sdcsla.242 Posted: Sat Jan 15 08:35:16 1983 Received: Mon Jan 17 04:36:17 1983 This note is asking that Someone Who Knows post a short situation report on net.sources answering the following points: 1) Roughly what areas of the net do not get net.sources? 2) Typically why don't they? 3) What is the official attitude to the failure of usenet for the second most important newsgroup? 4) What is the best alternative approved way of distributing sources? The rest of this note simply asks these questions at greater length (though more eloquently I hope). ============================= I have got a lot of requests recently for the sources of a program I posted to net.sources. While this is flattering, and shows that people all over the US have read my contribution, it is disturbing that netnews is apparently not properly distributed. It would also be nice to know what areas of the net suffer from this communications blockage. I am puzzled as to why this happens. If I were a system manager worried about shortage of resources and able to force my decisions on my users, I would keep net.unix-wizards and net.sources and cut the rest which do not demonstrably contribute to local productivity (though very likely they do in invisible ways by morale boosting, attracting good programmers who will only work where there is access to the net etc.etc.). These two groups dramatically extend the expertise available to my putative local wizards, and this argument applies forcefully, I would have thought, to all installations. Big ones won't see netnews as a big cost relative to other expenses, while small ones really need the free expertise the net makes available. Net.sources is an extension of the ideal behind all the main features of Unix from the earliest days -- decentralization and extensibility. Pipes and the path mechanism are meant to support the idea that programs are added piecemeal to the system, thus pooling software work spread over time and space. This works and is vital locally, and the net effectivly extends this to allow local goups to benefit from a vastly greater pool of creativity. So who is so short sighted as to refuse net.sources? I saw recently that someone, knowing that net.sources was not an effective newsgroup, was going to post a source to net.misc but was dissuaded by Mark Horton from doing so. What are the grounds for refraining? And what alternative is suggested? For instance, if the areas with no net.sources are well-defined are there one or two individuals there, who are prepared to act as forwarding stations? For instance I got two requests from people on the same machine, and I guess that if forwarding big files is a strain on resources, then we should find some way to economise on mailing big messages in duplicate across the continent. Steve Draper UCSD, San Diego ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdcsla!draper draper@nprdc