joachim@jrix.radig.de (Joachim Riedel) (04/21/91)
Hi, after posting the first sources (think so) to comp.os.coherent I received many, many mails. I want to tell you about my experiences from the start: I often took sources from comp.os.minix. Some weeks ago Guy van Wuellen posted the MINIX-Version of TASS 3.0. So I tried to port it to Coherent and it was easy to do that. At that time I had no news system for Coherent. About 3 weeks later there was WNEWS 3.0, a small but nevertheless good news system in comp.os.minix. So I ported this stuff and now could try TASS for News reading and posting. It's a good news reader, easy to use especially for beginners and I heard that CNEWS/Coherent is available at piggy and mwcbbs but only with rn. So I thought that a news reader is the right thing to start posting sources. Also it is not too big, about 100 k. Before I post it I asked here at our local "Coherent Mailing List" and they also appreciated that. I also remembered that Lar Kaufman once told me, when CFV: comp.os.coherent has started, that he would like to see sources in that group (don't want to blame you for that, Lar, I did the posting on my own responsibility). So I post it. The first mail I received was a mail from Scott Rose that sources should not be posted to a discussion group. No positive Mail, nothing. So I was angry about the mail and sad because I heard nothing positive. But some days later I got only positive mails and now I receive daily about 5 mails from people who want to see more sources in this group. Scott also send me later a new mail and now all things are ok. Thoughts: We need sources in this group ! That's for sure. There are a lot of people who have no access to FTP, a lot of people have difficulties to log into MWCBBS or it is unaffordable (all non-americans). Also COhware for $ 35 + $10 shipping (Europe) for 96 % PD-Software is no solution. (I will never support COHWARE unless the price will be reduced !) We have to watch what sources are intended to post. Here how Rich Nickel expressed it: We do not need a program to count the bunions in grandma's garden. So only useful sources should be posted. What is useful ? It's difficult to answer but for example the 17th version of just another MicroEmacs-Clone is not useful. But that may differ if this version can edit Files larger than 30 k. Before sources are posted we should announce the posting early so that it is possible to stop it if it's of no interest. The sources should be small. I think that about 200 k compressed is the maximum. That may differ if the program is of high interest. But cnews with 1.1 Mb is for sure too big. comp.os.coherent is a new group. So I think that a comp.sources.coherent group (alt.sources.coherent or whatever) will now not get enough votes. But we shall think about that in the near future. Administrators of Mailing List should filter large sources before redirec- ting comp.os.coherent to the List. We should think about marking sources in the Subject-Field to make it possible to find those articles with a program. Example: Subject: SRC: XYZ 2.6 Hints should be posted as fast as possible if there is a source in another newsgroup that may be portable to Coherent. Patches should afterwards be posted. But all the people should have the patch-Program. I'm against posting binaries but maybe patch is an exception. Libraries that make porting software easy have to be posted ! (libndir.a, libreg.a, available from piggy, supplied with TASS to ensure that everybody can compile it.) (I wonder that I did that but it seems to be that I sometimes do think.....) (No comments please........) Please reply as followups so that everybody can participate at the discussion. Just another thing: It seems to be that I now have a lot of friends all over the world. Thank you so much. Joachim +---------------------------------------+-------+-------------------+-------+ | Joachim Riedel | @ @ | Don't worry, | @ @ | | Geschwister-Scholl-Strasse 48 | \_/ | keep smiling | \_/ | | D-6050 Offenbach am Main +-------+-------------------+-------+ | Tel. +49 69 85 62 25 | joachim@jrix.radig.de | +---------------------------------------+-----------------------------------+