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From: wcs@ho95e.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: minix program postings to the net
Message-ID: <1316@ho95e.ATT.COM>
Date: Sat, 7-Feb-87 18:38:43 EST
Article-I.D.: ho95e.1316
Posted: Sat Feb  7 18:38:43 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Feb-87 02:20:20 EST
References: <962@osiris.UUCP> <7619@utzoo.UUCP> <468@gouldsd.UUCP> <1750@hoptoad.uucp>
Reply-To: wcs@ho95e.UUCP (46133-#Bill.Stewart,2G202,x0705,)
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs 46133, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 48
Keywords: binary postings?

In article <1750@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.UUCP (John Gilmore) writes:
>In article <468@gouldsd.UUCP>, mjranum@gouldsd.UUCP (Marcus J Ranum) writes:
>> More to the point, suppose I make a version of uuclone...
>>                        ...but do not want to give out sources ?
>Then don't post it to the net.  Send it to some IBM PC user group or
>package it up and sell it.  The net is for portable software, and
>binaries are not portable.

	While I generally prefer source postings also, for the usual
reasons, the net can *still* benefit from posted binaries.  The problem
is more extreme for generic-MSDOS than for Minix, since there are
hordes of compilers for MSDOS (I can't use source written for Turbo-Foolog)
but what about programs that are too big for the small-model Minix compiler?
If your program needs split I&D space to run, and you compiled it with
a compiler I don't have, binary is useful.  (Please post both if possible.)

	To descend to the level of charging-money-for-software, it may
be tacky to do so in an environment where the operating system is (almost) free,
but there are people who make their living from the software business;
if they're willing to post binaries here for something they'll sell in
another market, fine.

Also, one way to make money in the software business is to sell good
subroutine libraries, with the restriction that you can distribute
binary with no royalty - code written using such packages has obvious
limitations on source distribution.

>> shar wherever possible, tar for binaries, and no "arc" "pack" "squeeze"
>Shar forever -- and a simple one that doesn't indent rename [...]
	Unfortunately, there are braindamaged news-mailers out there
that can't handle arbitrary text; a good shar will insulate your code
a bit.  Likewise, binaries probably can't survive posting, so
	tar won't work.
Uuencode is kind of low-tech, but it does the job, and it seems
to be a standard on the pc newsgroups.  If someone is willing to adapt
"compress" for MINIX (should be trivial), a better format might be:
	: this is a shar file, using zcat and atob/btoa for binaries
	atob <<BINARY_EOF | uncompress > file1.o
	%&*&^&*%*%*%(*%*&%*&%(*&%*&%(*&%*%*$#$
	BINARY_EOF

btoa/atob is a pair of utilities provided with the compress distribution
which use a 4:5 expansion instead of the 3:4 expansion in uuencode.

>(terrorist, cryptography, DES, drugs, cipher, secret, decode, NSA, CIA, NRO.)
	What's NRO?
-- 
# Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G-202, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs