rmtodd@uokmax.UUCP (Richard Michael Todd) (06/11/88)
Note: I am not going to discuss here the merits (or lack thereof) of posting large binaries to the net. I did find one of John's comments interesting, though: In article <216100040@trsvax> johnm@trsvax.UUCP writes: >Even ignoring all of our foreign readers... BBS's don't cut it as a solution >because: > A) Most BBS's ignore development tools. I used to try putting > things like "make" (arguably one of the most powerful tools a > developer has) on BBS's, nobody knew what they were, thus nobody > downloaded them, thus they were deleted. This is because your > average BBS crowd has about as much in common with the Usenet > crowd as the Usenet crowd has with pickled beets. In large part true. However, what this means is that you need to put forth some effort to find a BBS which is above average. There is a BBS here in OKC called Sourcery Systems (405)728-2463, which does have a good deal of programmer-type utilities. It has large sections devoted to C source code. Not sure how interested they'd be in a make utility, as I think they've already got 3 or 4 of them :-). BTW, one of the sysops of Sourcery, David Drexler, *is* a Usenet type and has his own PC node on the net (address att!occrsh!squid!david). Much of the source on Sourcery came from comp.sources.unix. Considering how many people on Fidonet are setting up Usenet/Fido gateways, he's hardly a unique example. I doubt that Sourcery Systems is just a rare case, either. Up until a few weeks ago, we had another BBS in OKC which was quite similar (it went down a few weeks ago and I don't know if or when it will return). There is a large and fairly active ECHO on Fidonet (an ECHO is more-or-less the Fidonet analogue of a Usenet newsgroup) devoted to C, with maybe 30 or so messages/day (hard to say exactly as Fidonet message-reading software is appallingly primitive compared to rn and has a bad habit of losing its .newsrc-equivalent). I know there is a BBS out there called "The C BBS" which apparently has a good deal of software and also puts out an electronic magazine called "C News". (BTW, there's also an OS/2 echo out there, for those who are interested in that). I suspect you've got a good chance of finding a BBS in your area that at least has access to the C ECHO. > B) You are assuming some sort of communication between BBS's that > allows them to say, "Oh. Look. There's something neat and new > out there let's all make it available." Seems like that's a good assumption, because there *is* just a system. Granted, not all BBSes are on it or take advantage of it, but there are a good many who do. I've seen lots of requests for software on the ECHOs that are answered by "Yeah, I've got it here, come and get it". Sometimes they make files available for File Request (the Fidonet analogue of anonymous UUCP). >Try looking around at > the BBS's JUST WITHIN THE AREA WHERE YOU LIVE, did you find some that > had old versions of programs while others had the latest? Sure you > did. There are still people in this area who have not seen Procomm+ > and BBS's that are still carrying Procomm 2.4.0 (!). Yep. And there are some sites on the Usenet who are still running B News 2.10 or older. All I'm saying is, some BBSes are better than others. If you look around for a good one, you'll probably find it well worth your time. -- Richard Todd Dubious Domain: rmtodd@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu USSnail:820 Annie Court,Norman OK 73069 Fido:1:147/1 UUCP: {many AT&T sites}!occrsh!uokmax!rmtodd "MSDOS is a Neanderthal operating system" - Henry Spencer