Xref: utzoo news.groups:16785 comp.sources.d:4637
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!werner
From: werner@cs.utexas.edu (Werner Uhrig)
Newsgroups: news.groups,comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Proposed New Newsgroup - comp.shareware
Summary: not acceptable as proposed
Message-ID: <1091@hedora.cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 24 Jan 90 19:01:39 GMT
References: <139@sneezy.tcom.stc.co.uk>
Followup-To: news.groups
Distribution: news.groups
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 24


	1) first, you should call for a discussion of the topic 

	2) second, the call for discussion (and later for a vote) should
	   be posted in the moderated group news.announce.newgroups

	3) third, no generic shareware group is acceptable that is not
	   also subdivided by computer type (ibmpc, mac, amiga, etc)
	   why go back to the stone-ages?

	4) most shareware is not posted by the authors;  to assume, therefore,
	   that software posted in all "other groups" can be considered
	   FreeWare, is plainly absurd and has no legal base.

	5) I'm not against humouring a few leave-nodes who don't want to
	   be burdened by carrying shareware, but I wonder if this is really
	   a problem that would not be better solved by having those sites
	   not import any sources, period, but get them on disk from the
	   Boston Computer Society or the local club.  Maybe what is needed
	   is a moderator for all sources-groups (if they do not exist already)
	   and a priority scheme that would put shareware and demos at the end
	   of the queue, possibly never to get posted if the traffic in Free-
	   ware is heavy enough.  But, quite honestly, a lot of FreeWare is
	   not worth the bandwidth, but a lot of ShareWare is!!