donn@utah-cs.UUCP (Donn Seeley) (07/04/84)
At the Unix Fortran birds-of-a-feather meeting that was held at the recent Salt Lake City Usenix conference, it was proposed that a mailing list for 4.2 BSD f77 sufferers be created. The idea was that this mailing list would tie together the bug reports and fixes for the 4.2 BSD f77 compiler that have been appearing in the Usenet groups net.bugs.4bsd, net.lang.f77 and net.unix-wizards (of which only unix-wizards goes to ARPAnauts). The medium of a mailing list was felt to be superior to any attempt to use the existing Usenet news software by an overwhelming plurality of the audience at the meeting. I volunteered (gulp!) to organize the list, and moderate it if that was felt to be necessary. Before embarking on the creation of yet another mailing list, I thought I would canvass the readership of the original three groups (plus Usenet news administrators) and see what you thought about the following issues: Is a 4.2 BSD f77 mailing list necessary? Would a (possibly moderated) Usenet news group be acceptable to you? Should there be a Usenet group that is gatewayed to a list? Would you subscribe to the mailing list if it were created? What if it were only available as a Usenet news group? If both forms were available, which would you subscribe to, if any? Would you contribute bug reports to a list or news group? Would you contribute bug fixes to it? Should the list or group be moderated for quality control? How do you feel about the current level of quality in 4.2 BSD f77 bug reports and fixes? How long would you be willing to wait for a new fix to be approved? If you feel that the list needs to be moderated in order to ensure some sort of quality control, would you volunteer your site to run experimental versions of the compiler and libraries on production software? If you feel up to organizing your thoughts on these questions, mail your response to me at one of the following addresses and I will summarize to the net when the dust settles down in a week or two. Donn Seeley Computer Science Dept. donn@utah-cs.ARPA Merrill Engineering Building decvax!harpo!utah-cs!donn University of Utah hplabs!utah-cs!donn Salt Lake City, UT 84112 arizona!utah-cs!donn (801) 581-5668