Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!ncrlnk!ncrwic!ksuvax1!scott
From: scott@ksuvax1.cis.ksu.edu (Scott Hammond)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Binaries vs source, or UNIX vs PC's?
Message-ID: <311@ksuvax1.cis.ksu.edu>
Date: 23 May 88 06:57:43 GMT
References: <3116@charon.unm.edu> <10226@ncc.Nexus.CA>
Reply-To: scott@ksuvax1.UUCP (Scott Hammond)
Organization: Kansas State University, Dept of Computing & Information Sciences
Lines: 69

In article <10226@ncc.Nexus.CA> lyndon@ncc.nexus.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) writes:
>Although everyone is talking about sources vs binaries, I  wonder
>if the real issue isn't escaping us?
>
>Nearly *all* the binary postings I have seen are for one  of  the
>many  flavours  of  PC's.  The UNIX sites seem  to dislike moving
>binaries around, and the PC users have no use for source. To  me,
>this  boils  down  to  a  PC  vs  UNIX  argument, not a source vs
>binaries one....
...
>I think it's time the net considered the idea  of  splitting  the
>group  namespace  in  a  way  that  separates UNIX groups from PC
>groups at a much higher level. Rick Adams has  commented  on  how
>usenet  started  as  a  strictly UNIX related network, and others
>have indicated the growing resentment on the  part  of  the  "old
>guard"  towards  the  growing amount of non-UNIX related traffic.
>Splitting the system dependent groups into  unix.all  and  pc.all...
...
>This namespace split would allow the existing  backbone  to  drop
>the  PC  groups if they so desired...

Though our site is almost entirely UNIX oriented, almost every office
has a pc or Mac.  I personally don't care for binary distributions, but
I find it hard to believe so many sites would not benefit from pc
related groups.  If newsgroups are split by machine type I'm afraid
continued introduction of new machines would hopelessly fragment the
news (heaven forbid if I should have a pc running UNIX :-)). 

My concerns about binary distribution have more to do with the risks of
running a program I cannot easily study, and which might have
unadvertised functions (though I realize a piece of obscure code in a
large source distribution could be hard to notice, at least I have a
chance).  

Something else about source vs. binary distribution is that if I see
something interesting in source for a pc, I can always attempt to port
it to whatever I'm using...  I might learn something from an ibmpc
discussion, or by studying someone else's source code.  Without a pc, a
binary distribution is closed to me, hence, I think, the "growing
resentment" you mention.  I think the problem is that binaries
inherently limit the class of users who could benefit from it, as well
as consume what I feel is a disproportionate volume. 

The USENET is experiencing growing pains.  UNIX is no longer the only
thing out there, but then is the USENET for the strict benefit of the
UNIX community?  On the other hand, is it time for the USENET to evolve
into "logical subnets" based on propagation of the various groups?  Most
important, which will best serve the future of the USENET in the face of
continued growth?  

I prefer working within the existing hierarchy.  I believe "binaries" as
related to executables and pictures properly belongs under the "comp" heading.
But thinking about growth, perhaps we will reach a point where users are
exchanging digitized audio.  Do we want to end up with 

   pc.{ ibm.{exec,sources,d}, amiga.{exec,sources,d} } 
    and images.{gif,pic,etc}
    and rec.audio.digitized?
or bin.{ exec.{ibmpc,amiga,etc}, images.{gif,pix,etc}, audio }?
or comp.{ exec.{ibmpc,amiga,etc}, images.{gif,pix,etc} }, 
	and rec.audio.digitized?

Something to think about.  I hope I've contributed somthing useful to the
discussion.
-------- 
Scott Hammond                        Dept of Computing & Information Sciences
scott@ksuvax1.cis.ksu.edu                      Kansas State University
scott@ksuvax1.BITNET   attmail!ksuvax1!scott      Manhattan, Kansas     
{cbosgd,pyramid,ucsd}!ncr-sd!ncrwic!ksuvax1!scott   (913) 532-6350