jhsmith@crdc-vax3.ARPA (Jack H. Smith) (08/07/86)
Dave, I see nothing particularly distasteful with the idea of posting software to the list. My only suggestion is that we devise a subject-naming convention that would give readers a clue as to which messages are software, etc. This way the readers could look at the headers and see if they want to read them or delete them. More later, Jack H. Smith
prindle@nadc.ARPA (08/07/86)
What is distasteful about posting software to the list are all the negatives that Dave mentioned plus: Software ends up being "kept" in two places and in two different forms. Thus DDN users (who may have just joined the group and haven't received previous mail) must not only "look" at the CP/M,CPMUG,and SIGM directories on SIMTEL where software is stored in it's natural form (files), but must also "look" for more software embedded throughout the mail archives. One cannot, un- fortunately, even if he knew the subject line or date of a pertinent mailing which contained software, ftp a single mail item from the mail archives, but must retrieve a whole year's mail and then edit through it to separate out the software of interest. Also, this form of storage is very inefficient: instead of taking up less space than the original file (i.e. by using sq, lu, or arc), software ends up taking much *more* space than the original file because it's encoded. In other words, though there may be reasons to do it for the non-DDN community, it is clearly detrimental to the DDN side. Sincerely, Frank Prindle Prindle@NADC.arpa
WANCHO@SIMTEL20.ARPA (08/07/86)
Frank has brought up a very important point. The INFO-CPM mail archives are also stored here (in PS:<ARCHIVES.CPM>) from Day 1 (less some holes), completely unedited, except to occassionally split the current file into "manageable" chunks. We also hold the mail archives for 18 other mailing lists. The intent is to keep all archives online. However, with disk space currently at a premium, the duplication would quickly use up whatever's left. So, from our standpoint, we would much rather prefer a new spin-off list be formed, ala net.sources or mod.sources, perhaps named either net.micro.cpm.sources or net.sources.cpm or mod.sources.cpm, or whatever is correct by the prevailing convention(s), and leave net.micro.cpm off that newsgroup, please. --Frank