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Path: utzoo!mnetor!lsuc!dave
From: dave@lsuc.UUCP (David Sherman)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: UNIX clone with SOURCE CODE available now
Message-ID: <1503@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Jan-87 06:05:58 EST
Article-I.D.: lsuc.1503
Posted: Sun Jan 11 06:05:58 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Jan-87 18:57:11 EST
References: <1024@botter.cs.vu.nl> <5840001@hpvcla.HP.COM>
Sender: dave@lsuc.UUCP
Reply-To: dave@lsuc.UUCP (David Sherman)
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 44
Summary: cross-posting is OK; blame your software if you see it many times

In article <5840001@hpvcla.HP.COM> ericr@hpvcla.HP.COM (Eric Ross) writes:
>
>After seeing this posting in about 10 different news groups, I am afraid
>that my flame threshold has been reached (and I am relatively 
>non-combustible).  

If your software worked, you would only have seen the cross-posted
article once. Usenet is designed so that multi-newsgroup articles
take up no extra space and no extra transmission time, and are shown
to each reader only once. If you are using news-reading software
which does not do this properly (I see you are at HP, so you are
likely using notes), blame the software, not the poster.

>1)  A item that is cross posted to this degree is usually over
>    posted unless there is some overwhelming announcement that
>    must be made(in my opinion Minix does not fill that category).

Opinions differ, of course.  I'm not so sure it was unreasonable.
Getting a complete v7 UNIX equivalent for US$79 sounds like a
pretty major event in the UNIX world.  And Andy Tanenbaum (of The
Netherlands, not to be confused with ima!trb) is a serious
researcher who has been around for a good number of years (I
remember his talk on Pascal at the 1979 UNIX Users' Group).

>3)  Minix is, in fact, probably of interest to a great number of 
>    people--these people usually read Unix software related groups
>    and one posting such as comp.sources.d would more than suffice
>    in spreading the word.

I'd suggest that determining the particular subset of technical
groups which UNIX people read is practically impossible.
comp.sources.d, your example, would not have reached everyone.
It's supposed to be for followup discussions from net.sources postings
(which, incidentally, was not the appropriate place for your flame).

Nuff said? Let's not all waste any more time on this (except to
the extent someone wants to fix notes to understand cross-postings,
if that indeed is the problem).

David Sherman
The Law Society of Upper Canada
Toronto
-- 
{ ihnp4!utzoo  seismo!mnetor  utai  watmath  decvax!utcsri  } !lsuc!dave