Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!limbo!taylor
From: taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com (Dave Taylor)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Proposing a new "shareware.*" news heirarchy
Message-ID: <514@limbo.Intuitive.Com>
Date: 9 Mar 90 19:25:24 GMT
References: <5002@macom1.UUCP>
Reply-To: taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com (Dave Taylor)
Organization: Intuitive Systems, Mountain View, CA: +011 (415) 966-1151
Lines: 50

Larry Taborek, in a different discussion chain, sums up the shareware
discussion in this group nicely by commenting that:

> I think that we could give everyone a solution that they could
> live with if we had a shareware news group.  In that way sites
> that didn't want to carry it wouldn't have to, and sites that
> want shareware would receive it (or arrange to receive it).

This makes a heck of a lot of sense to me; and yes, I am the person 
who pays the phone bills for my complete Usenet feed of all groups
(including gnu.* groups, though I don't read them or endorse their
politics).

I propose that we try to work out a new heirarchy for all shareware
type articles, either source, binaries, or ??  Further, if we're going 
to the trouble of doing it for Unix programs, I suggest that we also
offer the distribution media for DOS, Macintosh, and &c programs too.

I suggest the name "shareware.*" which, though it's rather long, 
leaves no question about the purpose of the heirarchy, and also allows, 
since it's a new tree, us to organize things like:

	shareware.sources.unix
	shareware.sources.msdos

	shareware.binaries.mac

	shareware.patches.unix

	shareware.politics
	shareware.wanted

and so on.  I mean, if you don't want to have shareware on your machine,
you can now easily avoid it by having "!shareware.*" in your "sys" file.
Further, if you really want it, I'm sure that some sites like UUNET will 
pick it up and feed it to those sites willing to pay the phone 
connections...

What do people think?  Can we hack out some reasonable set of groups
and then make an intelligent, rational, and acceptable proposal to 
'news.groups' requesting the new heirarchy??  Remember we do have the
prior examples of the "gnu", "biz" and "alt" heirarchies too...

				Yours for structured anarchy,

						-- Dave Taylor
Intuitive Systems
Mountain View, California

taylor@limbo.intuitive.com    or   {uunet!}{decwrl,apple}!limbo!taylor