Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!van-bc!sl
From: sl@van-bc.UUCP (pri=-10 Stuart Lynne)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Posting Binaries vs. Sources
Message-ID: <1778@van-bc.UUCP>
Date: 21 May 88 20:54:10 GMT
References: <3116@charon.unm.edu> <11055@jade.BBN.COM>
Reply-To: sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne)
Organization: Public Access Network, Vancouver, BC.
Lines: 43

In article <11055@jade.BBN.COM> mlandau@bbn.com (Matt Landau) writes:
>The issue isn't particularly whether binaries are good or bad in some

>The real issue is whether binary postings are of sufficient utility
>to a sufficiently large part of the net to justify their aggrgate 

>A network of archive servers supplying access to large binaries, in the
>same way the currently provide access to sources, would have some 
>considerable advantages:

The big problem is keeping track of all of the archive servers. How about a
new moderated group called comp.sources.archives. 

It's primary purpose in life would be a place to send automatically generated
monthly posting's containing an ls-lR listing of the archive sites
available files, instructions on how to download and any other information
which might be required.

This would probably cut down on network traffic a *great* deal as the
continual stream of "where can I get part 6 of frobozz.hack for the blech?" 
would be unnecessary.

It probably wouldn't create a great of new traffic. Most of the sites that
do archiving now do send out these types of messages, they just are not all
collected into one spot. With this group the archive information messages in
comp.sources.unix and misc could be cross posted for example.

The other thing to note is that it isn't necessary to offer a mail based
service, but even just making a set of files available in your spool
directory with a public uucp account works well. Site omen for example
offers rz/sz/zmodem stuff this way. My site van-bc offers uupc sources. 

I've noticed that now that I know that I can download any comp.sources.unix
files from uunet I am much less worried about getting them in the first
place. I just track the indexes and pull anything I need and don't have
direct from there. Why should I tie up 20 or 30 megs of disk space up with
stuff which will probably be out of date before I can get around to using
it. A nice uptodate listing of what sources are available and where would be
much smaller and usable.


-- 
{ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision,uunet}!van-bc!Stuart.Lynne Vancouver,BC,604-937-7532