Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!husc6!ogccse!littlei!omepd!mipos3!pinkas From: pinkas@hobbit.intel.com (Israel Pinkas ~) Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: Re: New proposed shareware policy Message-ID: Date: 9 Apr 89 06:28:07 GMT References: <6599@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> Sender: news@mipos3.intel.com Followup-To: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Organization: Corporate CAD, INTeL Corporation, Santa Clara, CA Lines: 46 In-reply-to: dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu's message of 7 Apr 89 03:32:25 GMT In article <6599@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) writes: > Therefore the new proposed policy for comp.binaries.ibm.pc is as > follows: > > Shareware that requires payment is acceptable, provided it is > functional enough to be useful (i.e., not crippleware). Such > software will be posted in such a way that the article header > will identify it as payware. Individual sites will be able > to configure their news software to automatically suppress > transmission of such articles if they wish. > > Implementing this will require a small patch to "inews", the program > that handles all incoming and outgoing news at UNIX sites. I discussed > this with Joe Buck, a news guru, and the scheme seems workable. He and > I will have more to say about this soon. If you are going to this trouble, would it be any harder to drop it into a separate newsgroup. The idea seems solid, but there are so many sites that making each one rebuild is a problem. In addition, there are non-Unix sites which may have other problems, and there are sites that do not have sources, nor do they have anybody to rebuild. (Ultrix comes with a binary distribution of the Usenet software.) The other problem that I have with this scheme is that what one site does will affect other sites. While this is normal, in this case it will not be detectable. For example, Intel Santa Clara has newsfeeds from DEC-WRL, Olivetti, AMD, and HP. (There are a few more.) We feed a number of other companies, as well as ~100 internal sites. If DEC implemented the proposed change, we might get the missing articles from other sites. Then again, we might not. Users would not detect it very quickly, as there would still be volume in the group. If we created c.b.i.p.payware, it would be obvious what we (and downstream sites) are getting. -Israel Pinkas -- -------------------------------------- Disclaimer: The above are my personal opinions, and in no way represent the opinions of Intel Corporation. In no way should the above be taken to be a statement of Intel. UUCP: {amdcad,decwrl,hplabs,oliveb,pur-ee,qantel}!intelca!mipos3!cadev4!pinkas ARPA: pinkas%cadev4.intel.com@relay.cs.net CSNET: pinkas@cadev4.intel.com