johnm@trsvax.UUCP (06/07/88)
> I'm not too clear on the reason for the re-post of PICNIX so > soon after the last, only a few weeks ago. As has already been pointed out it is not a reposting it was a bug fix. I won't belabour this point. > It seems that many of these binary files just don't work very > well (ref: prev post on FLUSHOT+). Well, well... Welcome to the wide world of software that doesn't cost you anything. I've got about 17 Meg of files that I've gotten from the net, CompuServe, and bulletin boards and only about 5% of it gets used by me or my friends. You have to go through a lot of crap to find the real pearls. > Does no one test these programs, > independently of the author's claim, for anything? Isn't that > what we expect of the moderator, considering the bandwidth, cost > and security implications of binary programs? I think I'll let Rahul barbeque you for that remark. I'll pass... > For all the redundant confusion involved with the PICNIX > re-posting, I am left wondering if the audience justifies it. > A great number of the readers of the Usenet .ibm.pc groups are > programmers in small software shops, judging from the .sigs that > go by. A very popular combo is a UNIX system to do development > and a MS-DOS target system for testing and debugging. All of > the UNIX development utilities are available to tame the chaos > of a development process (SCCS, make, lex, yacc, lint, ...), > and using the MSC, 'c' can be readily ported to MS-DOS. And a great number of the programmers here are from large shops too. Do names like Tandy, Microsoft, HP, and AT & T ring a bell. I can't speak for any of the other shops but I happen to like the tools immensely and I've passed them on to others here to excellent reviews (our only complaint being that they won't work on our Model 2000's). > But, to make this work, the MS-DOS environment must remain virgin. > Imbed a scrap of SHAREWARE dependency in any program, > script or document of a product, and you are going to be very > unhappy. So the audience for PICNIX is more restricted to end-users. Here's where you appear to have gotten completely lost. These tools are meant to make MSDOS more like Un*x. They aren't meant to be included anywhere with anybodies products or anything like that. We here have no choice but to work within a DOS environment and the ability to have things like Emacs, cat (much better than "type"), a more that works like more is supposed to, etc. is very nice. The audience for this product is not end users, because they don't like Un*x on the whole, it's for developers. You just missed the point. > For a few dozen interested users, then, the whole net passes > these big, commercial and buggy SHAREWARE binaries, machine to > machine, all over the world. Doesn't that sound wasteful to you? > From my location, I can get Usenet from just two feeds but > there are hundreds of BBS's for MS-DOS access. Surely one amoung > them could grab it using PCpursuit, FIDO or Compuserve, or > something. If just one BBS in each city has access to a good > program, it will diffuse quickly. Ah ha! So this is your solution. If a few of the folks now reading this in Norway, Australia, and other foreign contries would just speak up now to enlighten this fellow that this is WORLD WIDE not a local neighborhood thing. 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. 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." 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 (!). > But I don't pack the binaries into a SHAREWARE archiver > to choke the net with hybridly compacted lumps, and which > require the user to conform to my favorite bell-whistle. These things are done in order to make the programs more easily available to all. Many people would not be able to get any programs at all if they weren't compressed in some fashion because they access the net at 1200 baud. Even .sigs are a slowdown for them. A few users of PORTAL should be able to add to this comment. [The remainder of the posting deleted] The only place where you succeeded in getting me to agree with you was on the subject of crippled programs or commercial demos. If it isn't a fully functioning program then I don't need it no matter what it's size. But others may have more to add to that. John Munsch