From: pete@q106fm.uucp (pete cervasio) Subject: Re: Splitting comp.os.linux Date: 21 Oct 1992 06:51:06 GMT
rhodesia@wixer.cactus.org (Felix S. Gallo) writes:
> tytso@Athena.MIT.EDU writes:
......
> >participate on the discussion on news.groups. Specifically, I am
> >referring to the people who receive this group via the Fidonet gateway,
> >and the people who are receiving this group via the Mail Digest
> >(currently 130-140 people).
>
> Two things need to be examined here. Firstly, if the Fidonet people
> managed to get comp.os.linux working before, how hard will it be to
> get a few additional newsgroups working? Secondly, compared to the
Okay, here's the mail I sent Curtis Yarvin earlier today about this.
Everyone may as well see it... I had originally wanted to save the
bandwidth...
==========
From pete Tue, 20 Oct 92 08:28:58 CDT
To: curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin)
Subject: Re: Splitting comp.os.linux
From: pete@q106fm.uucp (pete cervasio)
Message-ID: <Za4XsB2w164w@q106fm.uucp>
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1992 08:28:58 CDT
In-Reply-To: <1bvt84INN8cd@agate.berkeley.edu>
Organization: WKBQ-FM Engineering Department
curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin) writes:
> In article <1992Oct20.010251.25265@athena.mit.edu> tytso@Athena.MIT.EDU write
> |The only problem with this is that many of the people which will be
> |screwed by your actions don't have Usenet access, and therefore will not
> |be able to see your message on news.announce.newsgroups, nor be able to
> |participate on the discussion on news.groups. Specifically, I am
> |referring to the people who receive this group via the Fidonet gateway,
> |and the people who are receiving this group via the Mail Digest
> |(currently 130-140 people).
>
> What? I have no idea what you're talking about.
>
> How will people who get the group gatewayed by mail and Fidonet
> be harmed by a newsgroup split?
I can only talk about the Fidonet side... The main reason is that the
Fidonet backbone, which is how things move across country and around the
world, is a very difficult place to get a new message area on. Any echo
showing up on the backbone has a minimum requirement for average number
of messages per day, # sites _ALREADY_ carrying it, etc. Each of us
carrying the Linux echo now would have to make a separate call to the
system gating c.o.l.{whatever} until there was sufficient interest in
them to merit their moving onto the backbone. My Fidonet phone bill is
already over $150 a month... I guess a little more wouldn't hurt - NOT!
Believe me, while Fidonet is a lot like usenet in that it's no
democracy, it's not an anarchy, either. Stuff doesn't just happen, as
it seems to be able to do on this side.
Another reason? I'm not sure about everyone else out there, but some of
us have limits to the number of conferences we can carry on our bbs. Do
they screw the people who want to read about genealogy, C, pascal and
quickbasic because c.o.l is now c.o.l.{a,b,c,d,e}??? Linux is fairly
popular on my bbs, and I have no limit on the number of message areas I
can create, but one fellow in the net (using some brain-dead bbs package
that he doesn't want to change) is carrying as many as he's allowed -
40. If he decides to carry the linux stuff, does he drop a bunch of
other echoes, or does he just drop one?
PS: I read c.o.l every day without a threaded newsreader. I don't find
it to be too much. Maybe I'm just used to reading some of fidonet's
echoes... os/2 - 200 messages per day. C - about 100. Windows - over
200.
Pete C.
============
I carry (but don't read) the Genealogy echo for some of my callers. I
recall seeing that there were (on average) over 250 messages A DAY in
there. I had to change how often I pack that message base, because
people were missing a day and missing messages! I have it set to keep
three days worth now... :-)
Additionally, here's a part of the latest message that came through the
Region 11 Net Echomail Coordinator's echo explaining why some echoes
were added, others were dropped, and still others aren't even being
considered (I was wrong about minumum messages per day, it's per week).
===========
Applications to the backbone must include and demonstrate that
A.) There is sufficient traffic for inclusion (in general
25 or more messages per week),
B.) Number of nodes warrants backbone distribution (in
general 25 or more nodes)
C.) Seen-by's for purpose of demonstrating point B. and
showing cross regional distribution.
Applications not showing A, B and C will be considered incomplete
until the complete application includes that information.
===========
In order for me to carry an echo on my bbs, I want to see several of my
callers reading it. I wish I could be so picky as NEC about the other
nodes in the local net! The Region Echomail Coordinator wants to see
several nets in the region asking for an echo before he'll add it to the
region. The North American backbone folks want to see several regions
asking for an echo before they'll add it to the backbone.
The last netmail message I got from Greg Naber (who was instrumental in
getting this over to Fidonet in the first place) showed 15 cc:s - I
don't actually know how far c.o.l. is distributed in Fidonet, but don't
relish the thought of fighting _AT LEAST_ 15 other sysops for access to
the gateway system in between all the callers I get (lately over 35 per
day - quite a few have expressed interest in Linux now that I've made
the files not count against download credits or time).
Who's to say that ALL the groups formed from the split will have 25
messages a week?? Or that all the Fidonet people will want to carry all
of them? Maybe I want to carry them all, but Joe Schmoe at node
1:222/3333 only wants c.o.l.kernelhacking and Bill Snoodelmiester at
1:123/45 just wants c.o.l.{portingapps,xwindows}? Well, I guess our REC
would get us those three, since I made up the second request for them,
but I'm screwed if I want to read the other stuff. I'm sure I'm not the
only one in Fidonet interested in c.o.l.letsrunSVR4binaries, but it's
possible.
I'll admit that I was one of only TWO reading the Linux echo on my BBS
for a good long time, and _I_ was doing it through usenet news!!. Only
in the past 2 weeks or so has it picked up among my users.
If we could somehow get all the messages into one echo, my complaints
would largely be moot. There'd just be the problem of getting posts
into the correct newsgroup on the trip in the other direction.
Hell, I've been rambling on for a good long while here, writing,
editing, revising, walking across the room to get shit off the other
machine, wiping out whole paragraphs, and basically doing something I'd
rather not be doing. I'm tired and going to bed before I'm late for
work in the morning. I do hope this answered your question, though. :-)
Pete C.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Pete Cervasio | pete%q106fm.uucp@wupost.wustl.edu |
| I fish, therefore I am. | pete.cervasio@f1.n2250.z1.fidonet.org |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| If you think of C as a preprocessor for your assembler, it makes |
| just as little sense as before. (me) |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+