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From: dgreen@CS.UCLA.EDU (Dan Greening)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Revisited: Binary-only distributions
Message-ID: <8709220106.AA28610@oahu.cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Mon, 21-Sep-87 21:06:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: oahu.8709220106.AA28610
Posted: Mon Sep 21 21:06:09 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 24-Sep-87 01:30:53 EDT
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> Folks -

>     I contend that "binary-only" distributions are worse than no
>     distribution at all.  

> Marshall Rose

I agree completely.  My experience with the ups distribution is one of
a tremendous amount of wasted time trying to get it simply to display
on our HP workstation.  It still doesn't work.  I wish it had never been
offered.

The inadequacy of the explanation:  "I'm sorry, we won't be distributing
source until bugs get fixed." is incredibly irritating.  With a miniscule
amount of my effort, UPS *could* be running on HPs here.  And bugs related
to HPs could be fixed.  But no, it is impossible to get it running here, 
because Berkeley won't distribute the source.

Why the binary-only UPS distribution was silly:  It wasted a tremendous 
amount of time.  Many people got excited about a very useful tool, and 
willingly expended effort to bring it up.  People like me ended up with
nothing useful, and are expected to help these guys out with bug reports.

I even offered to port it to the HP system, and return the object.  Nyet.

I'm not going to touch another UPS distribution until I get source.


Dan Greening   Internet   dgreen@CS.UCLA.EDU
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