chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (03/12/88)
I got 33 responses to my straw poll on binaries. In general, they were strongly in favor of keeping binaries on the net (which, if you think about it, is to be expected, since the people with things to lose tend to be more active in responding to polls. Out of the 33, about four votes were to get rid of binaries completely, with another three to switch over to archive servers. The rest were for moderated binary groups. This is, obviously, not a scientific sample. Looking at it, I'd even claim the numbers were meaningless, because of the small (and biased) sample. At the same time, though, there were a number of comments and other points maded that I thought I'd post publicly (and comment on, of course). First, there's a lot of confusion about exactly what an archive-server is. A number fo people seem to believe it requires ftp access like INFO-MAC does. Not true. An archive-serve is a special program you send e-mail to, and it parses out commands and does something with it. It works on the same mail links as everything else, and doesn't require any special facilities. Except, of course, someone willing to run it. Anyone who wants more details about archive servers can bounce a message off of mine. To get the help file, send mail to "archive-server@plaid.sun.com" with a Subject line of "help" (uucp would be ..!sun!plaid!archive-server). One of the advantages of archive-server software is that you only send over the network what people want, and send it directly to them rather than broadcasting. Another advantage is that the postings don't go away -- you can request them when you want them rather than having to catch them as they go by, and if a piece is corrupted in transit, you can just request it again. The downside, of course, is that sites in the way get higher traffic, while sites that aren't in the way get no traffic at all. On the negative side, most of the comments more or less mirrored mine: that the volume of data being passed simply doesn't make economic sense based on the number of people who are actually taking advantage of it. A couple of negative opinions deserve some rebuttal though, for their lack of understanding of the situation: >I don't have any idea what the charter of USEnet is supposed to be, but >supplying ready made software to people too lazy or ignorant to generate >binaries from source sure doesn't seem to be it! Since there are many different (and non-compatible) development systems on micros, and not everyone has access to a given compiler (or any compiler, for that matter) sources don't make as much sense on micros as they do on Un*x. There's also the issue of shareware, where source is not available at all. Optimally, both should be posted, but it isn't alway an option. >- Too much trojan horses/worm type crap out there to really trust >things (even moderated). This is, to me, a non-issue. Trojan Horses haven't been an issue on the net (or with very limited exceptions, on Mac's at all). This is actually more an issue of the availability of non- (or semi-) commercial software at all and has nothing to do with the transfer mechanism that makes them available. In general, there weren't any comments made on the negative side that I think hasn't already been covered fairly well. It basically comes down to whether the cost of distribution is worth the benefits of the folks who use it. On the "Yes" side, there were a number of arguments about why binaries ought to be supported. They basically broke down into the following points: (my responses follow in parenthesis) o USENET is my only access. (True, but almost all of this stuff is easily obtainable elsewhere, either by joining a user group, calling up a BBS, or subscribing to a commercial database. For someone on a budget, a yearly membership to BMUG and the cost of ordering the PD disks they make available is pretty trivial. Local user groups in most cases let you bring floppies to meetings and copy them free. My basic position is USENET is your only access, but it doesn't have to be. If USENET didn't exist, what would you do? If you changed jobs to a company without USENET, what would you do?) o USENET is the only place we can get stuff in Europe. (Not really true, because there are folks on both CompuServe and Delphi from both Europe and Japan, but something to think about. The question I have, though, is whether it is worth passing out binaries because of the non-Americans. My feeling is no). o I download binaries here for a bunch of people, so the numbers are low. (Yes, but. Even if you assume that every person who reads comp.binaries.mac downloads every binary and passes it to five people, the numbers show that binaries are still expensive. And I'm willing to bet that less than 10% of the people who read comp.binaries.mac regularly pass copies to anyone else, much less half a dozen people. Also, if you do this service for people, it'd probably be easier/cheaper if you joined BMUG and bought their disks and simply shared the cost among all your friends. The reality is that the number of people who would be doing this kind of service simply can't be large enough to markedly change the numbers involved). o >I too am struck by the numbers. In response to your article, I went and >generated a list of the latest postings to comp.binaries.ibm-pc and went >looking on the local IBM BBSs here in town. >Every one of them was there! The BBS even had more recent versions than >were posted! AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH! (This is something I hadn't really thought of, but it's true on the Mac side as well. I can think of two recent postings (MINwriter and Macify) that were obsolete before they were posted. I took a quick look at info-mac recently, and was amazed at the number of downrev programs in their database. And USENET is worse, since things aren't stored in a central location, but come and go without any real trace). o Don't kill them without something to replace them. (There are lots of replacements. See above. I'd claim that many of these, especially user groups and CompuServe, are significantly better systems for getting this stuff distributed than USENET.) This has been an interesting exercise for me. I've been a strong, noisy supporter of the Mac groups (and the Mac binary groups) since day one. But looking at how many people are really using it, and the quality of the service that they're using, has been a real eye opener for me. The reality is that USENET is a greap place to exchange information. Comp.sys.mac is, by far, my first choice for asking macintosh questions because of the number and quality of people that read it. At the same time, though, I think USENET is by far the worst possible distribution medium for programs. It's too easy to damage programs in transit, it's too easy to lose pieces in between hops, and, most critical to me, there's no archive. You have to get it when it's posted or it's gone. There's no way I can change my mind two weeks later and go back and get something. There's no way a new user can know what's already been posted and get a copy. The word that comes to mind when I look at comp.binaries.mac is lobotomized. There are just too many inherent limitations in its distribution and access. There are too many problems and too few users for the size of the postings and the amount of bandwidth they take. There are too many more sophisticated, up to date and reliable alternatives that can be used to get the same (and more!) information. In other words, while comp.sys.mac works, and works wonderfully, the binary groups don't. After looking at the numbers, and listening to the arguments on both sides, I have to (somewhat regretfully) decide that while USENET is a great place for information, it's a terrible place for data, and binaries simply don't fit into what USENET is very well. This is a choice everyone has to make for themselves, of course. While I'm not suggesting the deletion of the existing groups, I no longer feel that creating new binary groups will solve anything. In the future, I plan on voting no to any suggestion to the expansion of comp.binaries. chuq Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ Speed it up. Keep it Simple. Ship it on time. -- Bill Atkinson