🚀 go-pugleaf

      Is anyone else besides me getting sick of getting many masgs of
      tens of kilo chars in size of what looks like a drunk writing
      teco macros?

I don't know --- I kind of like getting free software  (and  you  must admit
that most of the stuff that has been coming over the  net  recently  is both
good and useful -- thanx, guys). I find it a trivial flex of my right finger
to hit "n" if I don't want to read a particular note,  and  most  people are
pretty good about warning  us  about  large  files  coming  up  in following
messages.  "Shareware" is a great concept, and I for one would vote  for its
continuation.

      My poor mail file blows up and chokes MM more frequently with such
      stuff.  why cant people just send a pointer to their program and let
      those who want it get it or request it individualy.  It used to be
      considered anti-social to send such masssive files unsolicited.

      --E+

One problem with sending it to everyone who wants  it  individually  is that
that generates a *lot* of net traffic when a lot  of  people  want something
large like uEmacs (which a lot of people *do* want).  Many sites are  set up
such that USENET notesfiles are transmitted *once*  to  the  site,  and then
either (a) individually transmitted to local users  (not  expensive)  or (b)
posted on a publicly readable bulletin board or  notesfile  which individual
readers can read using rn/readnews/notes/...  (not  expensive  either).  The
situation is complex.  You  may  have  a  point  regarding  large  pieces of
software that is interesting to very few people, but it isn't  as  simple as
"don't post shareware, period".  For obvious reasons, "getting  it yourself"
(i.e., FTP, etc.) isn't a practical solution either.

The right way to cut down costs, in my opinion, is to (a) encourage sites to
provide a single mailing address for mailing lists in cases  when  there are
several users at that site interested in the mailing list, rather  than each
user being on the mailing list individually, and (b)  reduce  the  number of
bouncebacks (which generate a *lot* of net traffic).   Marshall  has already
taken some positive steps in the latter direction.

-- Ashwin.

ARPA:    Ram-Ashwin@yale
UUCP:    ...!yale!Ram-Ashwin
BITNET:  Ram@yalecs

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