From: tytso@athena.mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o) Subject: Re: Splitting comp.os.linux Date: 22 Oct 1992 21:52:07 GMT
I will not respond to most of Brain Talley's flaming drivel, but there
are a few points I have to make. I am also redirecting this thread to
news.groups. If the splitters are complaining about the increased
volume of comp.os.linux, I would suggest that we get rid of some of the
useless threads, and splitting c.o.l. is definitely one of them. If
that flamage takes place on news.groups, then the rest of us can ignore
it, until it comes time for a vote.
Brian has claimed that he doesn't care about the Fidonet Users; that if
they want access, it's their tough luck that all they have are IBM PC's
connected with 2400 baud lines instead of the niftiest, fastest SunOS
workstations which are connected to the internet. Well, I have news for
you: the Fidonet community is a *lot* of the community we want to reach,
by definition of what sort of hardware they are running.
So while "USENET MAY NOT BE A RIGHT", we are not talking about all of
Usenet. We are talking about access to the Linux community of users and
developers. This community first started out on a mailing list, and
later on moved to alt.os.linux and then comp.os.linux. But part of that
move involved the mail digest, so that people who could not get Usenet
could still be a part of the Linux community. Although some of you
newcomers who were not around during the early days of Linux may not be
aware of this, the Linux community is larger than just the USENET. It
consists of people who only have mail access, and now it consists of
people on Fidonet as well. We should not lightly screw over these
people, especially some of the people on the mail digest, since the mail
digest predates comp.os.linux!
While access to the Linux community may not be a "right", please be
aware that if you cast your vote in favor of the split, you will be
personally responsible for hurting people who are receiving this group
via the Fidonet and/or the mail digest mechanisms. Perhaps you will be
selfish and vote that way, you certainly have the "right" to do so.
However, I would hope that we can rise to a slightly higher moral plane
than merely just asserting our rights, even if they trample do over
other people.
======
I would also like to note that the call for discussion for
comp.os.386bsd(*), (Linux's "competition" if it has one) they raised the
question about whether one group or several subgroups would be better,
and what they ultimately decided was that it was wiser to have a single
group instead of fragmenting the discussion into several subgroups.
People don't really post and follow up to the right subgroups anyway.
And indeed, what is currently up for a vote is the single group,
comp.os.386bsd. I hope we will also have that wisdom, and preserve a
single group.
(*) Note that comp.unix.bsd, where currently the vast majority (over
90%) of the articles are about 386BSD, has more traffic than
comp.os.linux. On my machine, there is currently 2.5 times MORE traffic
on comp.unix.bsd --- and yet they still concluded that having a single
newsgroup, comp.os.386bsd, would be a better choice.
======
I've been around the Usenet a long time; in fact, I'm one of MIT Usenet
administrators, and I'm the person who shepherded the creation of
comp.os.linux in the first place. As far as whether or not Usenet is a
democracy or not, like it or not, there is a voting procedure in place
for group creations, deletions, and splitting. Given that in the past,
many of the people who have put in a lot of work on Linux since the very
beginning, including Linus himself, have stated that splitting the group
is not a good idea, if the Usenet was not at least in some respects a
democracy, we would not be having this discussion now. The c.o.l. would
not be split, end of sentence.
Fortunately or unfortunately, we do have a voting procedure about
whether or not to split the group. And supposedly someone has submitted
a call for discussion on said split, although I haven't seen it yet.
So, we are stuck with having this discussion. But could we please have
this discussion elsewhere, like on news.groups?
The people who have been claiming that the volume on c.o.l. is too high
seem to be all-too-ready to add to the volume here. Why don't we have
this flamefest on news.groups, so people who don't care don't have to
see it. More importantly, I suspect most people have already made up
their minds, and so for them these articles will be just a waste of time
and of bandwidth. Those who still are trying to decide can just go to
news.groups, and see what the *real* high volume groups are like.
- Ted