gjc@mitech.com (06/20/91)
In article <EMV.91Jun19020107@bronte.aa.ox.com>, emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes: > .... Hmm. Looks like an automatic way of producing this stuff is an idea who's time has come. There are hundreds of people who announce materials available for anonymous FTP. If there were an easy-to-use standard form for them to fill out on-line, I'm sure sure it could be popularized quite quickly. In fact, a good standard form would help some people to decide to announce something that they have been sitting on. > [*] Pointers to materials available under the GNU Public License will > of course be freely redistributable; MSEN will not assert any > copyright or place any restrictions over their redistribution, and > I'll continue to try to track GNU project announcements even if I give > up free distribution of everything else. Why? Are you afraid to rub them the wrong way? RMS is *for* the idea of people charging for services relating to GNU software. Being paid to find the right software would be a reasonable service. -gjc
emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) (06/21/91)
In article <632@mitech.com> gjc@mitech.com writes:
Hmm. Looks like an automatic way of producing this stuff is an idea
who's time has come. There are hundreds of people who announce materials
available for anonymous FTP. If there were an easy-to-use standard form for
them to fill out on-line, I'm sure sure it could be popularized quite
quickly.
I think that such a form would be quite useful; I know that it would
help me out a lot. I wonder what all would be on it, though -- at
least all of the information that I'm gathering now, plus more if you
could stand it. Suggestions and working code welcome.
You can't rely on volunteerism and self-cataloging to solve the entire
problem. Existing projects which rely on self-cataloging and
self-description have miserable hit rates; for instance, the BBN /
NNSC Internet Resource Guide lists but 26 or so of the roughly 1000
archive sites on the internet. Or look at the "original"
comp.archives; people were supposed to send in descriptions of their
stuff, and fill out a complicated database format. They didn't.
--
Edward Vielmetti, moderator, comp.archives, emv@msen.com
"(6) The Plan shall identify how agencies and departments can
collaborate to ... expand efforts to improve, document, and evaluate
unclassified public-domain software developed by federally-funded
researchers and other software, including federally-funded educational
and training software; "
"High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, S. 272"dank@blacks.jpl.nasa.gov (Dan Kegel) (06/21/91)
emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes: >In article <632@mitech.com> gjc@mitech.com writes: > There are hundreds of people who announce materials available for anonymous FTP. > If there were an easy-to-use standard form for them to fill out on-line, I'm > sure sure it could be popularized quite quickly. >I think that such a form would be quite useful... >[but] Existing projects which rely on self-cataloging and self-description have >miserable hit rates... people were supposed to send in descriptions of their >stuff, and fill out a complicated database format. They didn't. Biology journals are having success requiring researchers to fill out a standard online form describing the genetic sequences to appear in their papers. We could do likewise; the moderators of sources newsgroups (or of big FTP archives) could all get together and agree that, before any submission would be considered, a standard form must be filled out. Every published package ought to have a unique identifier, too; you can't rely on the name of the package (how many 'xplot' or 'ascii2ps' packages are floating around out there?). Identifiers like comp.sources.x/v8n221 would be sufficient. - Dan Kegel
scs@iti.org (Steve Simmons) (06/22/91)
dank@blacks.jpl.nasa.gov (Dan Kegel) writes: >Biology journals are having success requiring researchers to fill out >a standard online form describing the genetic sequences to appear in >their papers. Bad comparison. Getting articles published by academic journals is a *necessity* in research -- publish or perish. The authors will bend over backwards to get published. Those who post sources have no strong motivation to obey any form rules -- look at how many things come out without man pages or decent docs. -- "If we don't provide support to our users someone is bound to confuse us with Microsoft." -- Charles "Chip" Yamasaki
jerry@ora.com (Jerry Peek) (06/22/91)
In article <632@mitech.com> gjc@mitech.com writes: > Hmm. Looks like an automatic way of producing this stuff is an idea > who's time has come. There are hundreds of people who announce materials > available for anonymous FTP. If there were an easy-to-use standard form for > them to fill out on-line, I'm sure sure it could be popularized quite > quickly. > > In fact, a good standard form would help some people to decide to announce > something that they have been sitting on. Seems like a great idea to me. A form like this could be parsed to build descriptions of ftp-able software automatically. If completed forms were posted on USENET, they could supplement (replace?) comp.archives. News reading programs could search for the "good stuff." And it might help to find anonymous ftp sites that archie should list. If there were a standard form like this, what fields should it have? How could people find out about it? --Jerry Peek, jerry@ora.com or uunet!ora!jerry
bajan@cs.mcgill.ca (Alan Emtage) (06/23/91)
>In article <632@mitech.com> gjc@mitech.com writes: > Hmm. Looks like an automatic way of producing this stuff is an idea > who's time has come. There are hundreds of people who announce materials > available for anonymous FTP. If there were an easy-to-use standard form for > them to fill out on-line, I'm sure sure it could be popularized quite > quickly. > > In fact, a good standard form would help some people to decide to announce > something that they have been sitting on. Just to add my 2 cents to this.... I'm afraid that my experience with the majority of site administrators over the past 7 months or so in running archie has shown me a couple of things: (a) The anonymous directory is usually maintained by one of the sysadmins of the facility on his/her own time and on their own volition. I was a sysadmin for long enough to understand that the maintenance gets done when other matters are not pressing... ie, seldom. (b) Often there is no commitment from "management" to the archive. This is especially true of educational institutions where the archive is tolerated as a pet project of the sysadmin mentioned above. If this person leaves, the archive can very rapidly fall into disrepair. This is less true of commercial organizations where the archived software tends to be directly related to the corporate projects. The management level of some facilities don't even realize that they are running an archive. People have suggested to me in the past that we write a program that would run on archive hosts which would inform archie when the configuration of the site had changed (files added/deleted/moved around). I usually relate the story of the "arbitron" program to them (for those whoe remember that :-). It's 4PM. Do you know where your arbitron is ? In other words the program would probably be installed and then forgotten. I'm afraid that archive based information is going to be spotty at best (considering there are over 1000 archive sites now worldwide). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alan Emtage, "Ashore it's wine, women and song; McGill University,CANADA Abord it's rum, bum and concertina" -19th Century British Naval Saying
nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) (06/23/91)
In article <1991Jun22.201533.25058@cs.mcgill.ca> bajan@cs.mcgill.ca (Alan Emtage) writes:
(a) The anonymous directory is usually maintained by one of the sysadmins
of the facility on his/her own time and on their own volition. I was a
sysadmin for long enough to understand that the maintenance gets done
when other matters are not pressing... ie, seldom.
Yup. Go look in grape.ecs.clarkson.edu's incoming directory. :(
(b) Often there is no commitment from "management" to the archive. This
is especially true of educational institutions where the archive is
tolerated as a pet project of the sysadmin mentioned above. If this
person leaves, the archive can very rapidly fall into disrepair.
See my .sig. :( Hopefully that won't happen at Clarkson...
--
--russ <nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu> I'm proud to be a humble Quaker.
I am leaving the employ of Clarkson as of June 30. Hopefully this email
address will remain. If it doesn't, use nelson@gnu.ai.mit.edu.fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) (06/25/91)
> In article <632@mitech.com> gjc@mitech.com writes: >> There are hundreds of people who announce materials >> available for anonymous FTP. If there were an easy-to-use standard form for >> them to fill out on-line, I'm sure sure it could be popularized quite >> quickly. jerry@ora.com (Jerry Peek) writes: > Seems like a great idea to me. A form like this could be parsed to > build descriptions of ftp-able software automatically. If completed > forms were posted on USENET, they could supplement (replace?) > comp.archives. This sounds vaguely like the MIT Lens software. Does anyone have any information about Lens? It should be, at least, a good starting point. --- Tom Fitzgerald Wang Labs fitz@wang.com 1-508-967-5278 Lowell MA, USA ...!uunet!wang!fitz