Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!ucbvax!LL-VLSI.ARPA!malpass From: malpass@LL-VLSI.ARPA (Don Malpass) Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc Subject: Re: New public domain archiving system development Message-ID: <8809191353.AA16806@ll-vlsi.arpa> Date: 19 Sep 88 13:53:38 GMT Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 32 How lucky we all are. It's to be all things to all people, will probably be available tomorrow, and never have to go beyond Version 1.0000 because it will obviously have no bugs. Look folks, as has been pointed out here by many people, this flap and all this BS started long before there was even TALK of any law suit, because the issue was >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> INCOMPATIBILITY <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< with a format that was in such widespread use that it had, with good reason, become a de facto standard. Unlike those who did a service by providing compatible but faster "products", PK had the lousy judgement to try to change the format rather than introduce a new standard to the world. The code, even with the initial bugs, was fast enough to generate a following, and now we are all paying the price. There is NOTHING WRONG with all the .arc files out there except that tools may not have been provided [on UNIX, for example] for unpacking a few of the recent incompatible ones. SO LET'S NOT PUT OURSELVES THROUGH ADDITIONAL SUFFERING BY CHANGING ALL THOSE FILES. Leave them alone, and when ALL the tools exist start adding new non-.arc files in the new format. From the number and length of the wish-lists floating around that'll be a long time unless we want a slap-dash job that pleases almost nobody. It will be much better if we allow the time for this project to be done professionally and not embrace it until the community is generally pleased with the results. Meanwhile, let's not continue to cut off our collective noses to spite our faces. The number of hours we're all pissing away reading this continuing blurb-warfare could be better spent doing what we're being paid to do. --- Don Malpass [malpass@LL-vlsi.arpa], [malpass@spenser.ll.mit.edu] My opinions are seldom shared by MIT Lincoln Lab, my actual employer RCA (known recently as GE), or my wife.