Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!bbn.com!rsalz From: rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Subject: Re: SIMTEL20 archives Message-ID: <278@fig.bbn.com> Date: 29 Dec 87 14:08:29 GMT Organization: BBN Laboratories, Cambridge MA Lines: 56 Summary: Who pays? [ It's the Holiday season, time for some bad news. :-] >>Could some kind soul(?) PLEASE post some of these programs of importance? >How about a UUCP server, something like the XSTUFF server for the X Window >System patchs, where you send a mail message with a subject line of > Subject: SEND this >and it does! Note that basically all they send is patches, and if they're using Brian Reid's code to implement the server then there is some very tight load-limiting being done. >Please! If SIMTEL20 has gone to the trouble of archiving all this software, >could someone else make it available to the UUCP community. Well, technically they went to the trouble to make it available to the ARPA community (now the Internet), and not the entire world. At one point they had a mail-based service, but it overloaded their machine (A DEC-20). Also, seismo had a special line in their sendmail.cf to explicitly punt UUCP mail originating from SIMTEL... > (Ideally, this "server" could anonymous FTP anywhere and > return a [uuencoded? ARCed? compressed?] UUCP message). >Could UUNET do this? Someone? Please? You've got a basic misunderstanding here, I think. You can only FTP among sites on the Internet (FTP on a LAN is boring and doesn't count :-). If you can do that, you don't need the server. Or, are you asking that the server know all the archives everywhere, and FTP and pick up the right software from the right source? Ouch! Who could maintain such a database? It's an impossible task. Finally, we come to the big question: who pays? Sure, I suppose uunet could bring up Brian's archive-server, but all it would take is for one or two people -- say in Canada, California, and England -- to all say "send me hack and xtrek" and bang! lots of people would get pretty annoyed: all those people along the way who paid good long-distance money to send you sources they have no interest in. I'm not saying everyone's a Scrooge, and that no one wants to help out a friend. I am just pointing out how easy it is for a system to get overused, if not abused, so greatly that it becomes too expensive to maintain. I speak from the experience of watching several archives (csnet, Reid's, and a former mail-based mod.sources archive) and helping out with others (the comp.sources.unix archive sites, e.g.). What can be done? Not much, but here's a couple of points. Forget about any chance of a free ride. Hoard all the software you find, always, and remember the other guy: post announcements of what you have and make it available. Set up a public-access Unix machine or BBS and see if you can make arrangements with SIMTEL to get a copy, under the promise that you'll always make the archives freely available to anyone who calls you. Wait for the Usenix software tape, which will contain about 20Meg of the net.sources, comp.sources.unix, mod.sources, comp.sources.misc, and other random things like X. /rich $alz, moderator of comp.sources.unix -- For comp.sources.unix stuff, mail to sources@uunet.uu.net.