Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!convex!news From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) Newsgroups: alt.sources.d Subject: Re: NON-SOURCE POSTINGS CONSIDERED HARMFUL! Message-ID: <1991Jan19.194853.3072@convex.com> Date: 19 Jan 91 19:48:53 GMT Sender: news@convex.com (news access account) Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) Organization: CONVEX Software Development, Richardson, TX Lines: 33 Nntp-Posting-Host: pixel.convex.com From the keyboard of src@scuzzy.in-berlin.de (Heiko Blume): :tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes: : :>Oh well. I thought that it needed being said, and in public so that folks :>who didn't know better and might sometime go off and post non-source would :>learn that this wasn't the best idea. : :sigh, what is "source code" ?! i got a somewhat flamy mail :in reply to my bash patches indicating that i should only :post source to alt.sources, and that a.s.d is for comments :and requests... i suspect that it's a prepared file that :the person (didn't bother to save the mail) sends to anyone :who, in his opinion, hasn't posted "source". I'm sure glad it wasn't me. :so let's discuss: are patches to a generally available program "source code" ? I asked myself the same question when posting a recent patch. There exists an 'alt.sources.patches', but it doesn't seem to get used very much. In the comp hierarchy, we have a comp.sources.bugs, which does see a fair amount of traffic. IMHO, it's ok to post patches to alt.sources, since they are themselves source. Perhaps the thought police will explain wherein I err in opining thus. I still think that alt.sources is a sufficiently useful group as to merit promotion into the comp hierarchy to promote a wider distribution. --tom -- "Hey, did you hear Stallman has replaced /vmunix with /vmunix.el? Now he can finally have the whole O/S built-in to his editor like he always wanted!" --me (Tom Christiansen )