Date   : Fri, 20 Nov 1987 11:37:30 EST
From   : Brint Cooper <abc@BRL.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Posting Binaries

Ken Wallewein writes:

>   This is a most frustrating, Arpanet-chauvinistic attitude! Only a fraction
> of the people who recieve this newsgroup have the capability of performing
FTP
> access to the massive SIMTEL20 archives. This summer, SIMTEL20 shut down
their
> mail server, so that's out too... but I guess those on Arpanet don't care
> about that. If they want to use SIMTEL20, fine, but DON'T go telling
the rest 
> of the group not to post binaries! Come ON!!!
> 

Keith Peterson responds:

> I am the one who must wade through all the mailer rejections that are
> caused by mailing list recipients exceeding their alloted disk space
> and by angry system administrators who have deliberate message size
> limits because they have to PAY for every byte that they receive.
> 
> The Info-Cpm mailing list handler presently has a limit of about 50k.
> If binary postings start I will ask the system administrator to reduce
> it to 10k.  I don't have the time to read all the rejections.

It is ironic that this dialog arrived in my mailbox on "Graham-Rudman
Day."  SIMTEL20.arpa is funded by your tax dollars and mine.  The
official justification for even having CPM archives on this machine is
that there are still a number of CPM workstations in government
laboratories and offices which are made more useful and efficient (as
are their human users) by having public domain CPM software readily
available.

In various times and places, we have all heard pleadings to keep down
the volume of traffic flowing through UUCP links in order to keep down
the long distance telephone bills of the individual users.  Similarly,
we are seeing problems in internetworking to Bitnet and to the
UK community because host resources are overworked and funds are not
forthcoming to upgrade gateways.

Well, folks, the U.S. government is in the same boat as the rest of us.
Keith Peterson and many other folks on Arpanet/MILNET machines are not
paid to distribute public domain software to the world at large.  Their
kind extensions of their work time into their personal lives and time
represents a "second mile" not always noticed or appreciated.

I agree with Keith:  Servers on Bitnet and "the UUCP net" are needed to
complement SIMTEL's service.  Such a server,  APPLE2-L, runs under
something called LISTSERV at BROWNVM.  Also, a UseNet group,
comp.binaries.cpm, might be useful.  Conceivably, it could be gatewayed
with a Bitnet server.

But if the folks in the U.S. REALLY desire some governmental austerity,
they're all going to have to allow their own oxen to be gored just a
little.

Cheers,

_Brint

DISCLAIMER:  I usually don't issue these things.  However, for the
record the foregoing, and EVERYTHING ELSE I EXPRESS, are my own opinions
and my own ideas.