Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!ria!csd.uwo.ca!webber
From: webber@csd.uwo.ca (Robert E. Webber)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: comp.os.minix splitup
Message-ID: <2545@ria.ccs.uwo.ca>
Date: 25 Mar 91 05:39:01 GMT
References: <9103220852.AA04339@grape.ecs.clarkson.edu> <9410@star.cs.vu.nl>
Sender: news@ria.ccs.uwo.ca
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In article <9410@star.cs.vu.nl> ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes:
....
.I don't understand the desire to have so many little groups.

Actually it is fairly simple.  Most people find less than 10% of the
messages posted to the group actually worth reading.  Thus, if we
split comp.os.minix into:
        comp.os.minix.interesting
and
        comp.os.minix.uninteresting
then we would be done with the Great Name Debates and could settle
down to the more advanced debate over which messages were posted to
the wrong group.

Of the groups actually proposed, comp.os.minix.binaries is the only
one that really shows promise.  Of all the programs that came with
MacMinix, the ones that came as binary-only have been the most trouble
(specifically elle which seems to loose track of the keymap in weird
and wonderful ways and cc/ld which seems to from time to time not be
able to open files that all other programs have no trouble with).  So,
as long as people don't post compressed source archives, uuencoded
binary data files, etc., to the binaries group, I could actually see
being able to safely unsubscribe from that group and thus reduce the
total number of message I read per year by 10 or so.

The notion of a sources group seems to have run into the problem that
people who want sources also want patches (by author and/or by others)
and any significant discussion about installation, bugs, ports, etc.,
which starts to sound like the comp.os.minix.interesting again.  Over
the past couple of weeks, the most interesting sources related posting
I have seen was the comment that by modifying a couple of include files
and doing a one-shot pass over the file system, minix could be made to
work with longer than 14 character file names.  This comment did not show
which files needed to be change, what the change actually was, and was
in defense of the usefulness of sources rather than any discussion about
file name lengths in minix.  It would clearly never have appeared in
any comp.os.minix.sources group under any reasonable notion of what
a sources posting is and yet it was an interesting and important comment
about the minix sources (independent of its significance in the discussion
of the merits of having sources).  As Euclid used to tell Ptolemy, there
is no royal road to minix - you got to read everything.

--- BOB (webber@csd.uwo.ca)