🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1584@ihuxi.ATT.COM> store2@ihuxi.ATT.COM (Kit Kimes) writes:
>In article <301@mcdsun.UUCP>, fnf@mcdsun.UUCP writes:
>> In article <432@netxcom.UUCP> rkolker@netxcom.UUCP (rich kolker) writes:
>> >Hey public domain software disk distribution folks!
>> >
>> >Are there any disks past #3 yet?
>> 
>> Yes, I'm up to disk number 68 now and ...  Ooops, you mean this isn't
>> the Amiga newgroup, nevermind...  :-) :-) :-) :-)
>
>I'm not sure what disks Rich Kolker is refering to (or why 68 seems like 
>a lot of disks for the Amiga), but Current Notes (the news magazine from
>WAACE) lists 116 PD disks available in the March issue and have added a
>few more this month but I don't have it with me, so I don't know who
>many exactly.  The nice thing about their disks is they are only $4 plus
>a $1 shipping charge for every 6 disks.  They also carry ST-Magic disks
>for use with the Mac Sack (11 so far) and a few CPM disks.

I believe the slackers Rich Kolker is taking to task include yours truly
and a couple of other folks.  Sorry about the long delay... << insert
mumbled excuses about hectic end-of-term at universities >>

For those who joined the game in progress, I and a couple of other folks
on Usenet got the bright idea of putting together some of the PD software
available for the ST onto floppy disks and making same available through
the postal system.

Reasons for this included difficulties that had been encounted by many in
trying to uudecode and unARC files posted to the net, and the possibility that
the net.powers.that.be might one day cut off posting of binaries because of
the large cost in long distance charges that these incur.

The disks announced so far include:
1.1 -- Uniterm 1.7a, ARC, UUDECODE, ETERNAL2 RAM disk, etc.
2.0 -- Moshe Braner's utilities + his MicroEmacs + PROFF + all sources
3.0 -- Bruce Wampler's VIX/TVX (Unix "vi" compatible editor + sources)

As of now, there are four more:

4.0 -- AIM image processing system from the University of Delft
5.0 -- Miscellaneous utilities
6.0 -- MicroGnuEmacs 1b, STEDT (EDT-like editor), STWRITER 1.70 word processor
7.0 -- LARN (rogue-like game), ADVENTURE, STARTREK, BATLSHIP, etc.

plus disk 1 will have the latest version of Uniterm (1.7b 016).


Obviously we're not as industrious as Fred Fish with his Amiga disks (it's
certainly not for lack of PD software for the ST).  On the other hand, there
are obviously many clubs and user groups with far more resources that are
doing a much better job than our poor efforts.

If anyone has information on what's available through the postal system from
various user groups, it should certainly be posted here.  Don't forget that
only a fraction of ST owners are active on BBSs or the commercial information
services; some don't even have modems.  Also while ARPANET and BITNET users
are well served by fileservers like UHUPVM1 with archived ST software, there
are far more people on Usenet without such access (and the nature of Usenet --
where sites have to pay real money for long distance charges -- tends to
prohibit setting up such archives)... so postal distribution of PD software
does fill a real need among Usenet users.

On the other hand, many user groups and BBS users don't know about Usenet
(I try to help this by posting digests of Usenet stuff to bulletin boards in
Toronto and Hamilton).  So perhaps it would help for some Usenet users who
belong to major North American user groups  that already make disks available
by mail to whisper some words in the right ears and get them to publicize
their wares on Usenet.

Finally, now that uuslave is available for the ST, it's certainly conceivable
that archives of ST software could be set up for Usenet access on STs
themselves (sort of UUCP  BBSs).  Anything that might bridge the gap between
Usenet and the larger world of BBSs and user groups would be beneficial.

In the meantime, I guess we'll continue with the SnailMail disks.  The next
posting will contain more details about what's on the latest batch and how
to get them...

-- 
UUCP:  ... !mnetor!lsuc!maccs!gordan              BITNET: GP@TANDEM
                         Gordan Palameta
"Nevidimy, soshol s uma"          -- alleged computer translation of
  ("invisible, insane")           "out of sight, out of mind" into Russian