Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac:16384 news.admin:2281
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!ht!spt!gz
From: gz@spt.entity.com (Gail Zacharias)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,news.admin
Subject: Re: some (should-be) ground-rules for submissions to comp.binaries.*
Message-ID: <307@spt.entity.com>
Date: 23 May 88 21:24:31 GMT
References: <2689@utastro.UUCP> <699@lakesys.UUCP>
Reply-To: gz@eddie.mit.edu (Gail Zacharias)
Distribution: na
Organization: The Entity, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 24

In article <699@lakesys.UUCP> macak@lakesys.UUCP (Jim Macak) writes:
>And while we're at it, perhaps a standard program for doing the
>packing/compression ought to be adopted.  Ray Lau's StuffIt is the obvious
>choice. <....> Besides, Ray Lau only requests a shareware fee if one uses
>StuffIt for encoding/archiving purposes.  Otherwise, it is considered a
>freebie: all the more reason to adopt it as a standard on this system.

In order for you to use this "freebie", the contributor has to use StuffIt
for encoding.  This pretty much excludes people like me, who oppose shareware
on principle, from contributing.

I suggest tar and compress instead.  There are (several) freeware versions of
each available for the macintosh, and I'm sure it'd be easy to write versions
for other micros.  And besides, every unix system has them, so you're not
locked into one individual's good will for continued support.  This also gives
archive sites (which are pretty much all Unix) a lot of flexibility on how to
handle storage without having to transfer files to a micro for repackaging.
For example, the software could be posted as uuencoded tar files, then
automatically uudecoded and compressed on receipt at the archival host,
thereby getting around the compressing-compressed-files problem of news
transmission.
 --
gz@entity.com					 ...!mit-eddie!gz
	   Unix: when you can't afford the very best.