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