#: 7365 S7/Telecommunications
    14-Oct-90  21:05:22
Sb: #UUCP frustrations
Fm: Robert A. Larson 75126,723
To: all

FLAME ON.  After spending over an hour transfering UUCP.AR from dl 7, I was
extremly frustrated to find that it was 6809 executable: 100% worthless to me. 
FLAME ON HIGH: If you absolutly MUST distribute binary executeables for one of
the os9 arcitectures, please mark it as such in ALL annoncements of it.  Source
code is much more likely to be usable, fixable, and much less likely to contain
viruses.  (Yes, writing an os9 virus would be quite simple.  If I though it
would get people to distribute source rather than executable, I probably would
write one.)

The self-conflicting copyright notice (apperently based on the gnu public
licence, with modifacations trying to make it so the author can make money on
the code) makes it so I can't even give what I've downloaded away without
having source code, which is not included and apperently only given to those
who ask special for it.  Even if I do get ahold of the sources for the 6809 and
modify them to work on my 68k machine, I can't give, sell, or otherwise
distribute the changes without more special permission.

I'm getting pretty desperate for a uucp I can use on my qt20x and include with
my distribution of C-news and rn.  If I can't get the needed special
dispensation, it looks like I'll have to port one of the freely available uucps
myself.  The main reason I haven't started doing so already is hearing about
this one and not wanting to duplicate effort.

If I sound frustrated, I am.  I did get a good nights sleep before composing
this message in order to calm myself down a bit.

(compuserve sets a new record low for kermit througput: 561 cps on a 2400 baud
modem.  I thought my link to a machine over an overloaded eathernet that likes
to take breaks of several minutes of no data transfered was horid, I regularly
get 1500-2000 cps on it.  I get in excess of 3000 cps on a mnp5 connection to a
fast machine.)

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