Beware of the secret police!

[Bruce Wampler]

	This is about my recent announcement about the availability of
a TI 9900 cross assembler.
**** FLAME ON! ****
	I'm so po'ed about some mail I got that I feel compelled to tell
tell whole net.  There is no net.sources.discussion, so I'm posting to
net.sources.  Any MORE flames about that to /dev/null!

	I received two rather terse and rude pieces of mail from a
couple of twits who consider themselves some sort of net secret police
informing me that my announcement was inappropriate for net.sources.
In case you missed the original announcement, I announced that SOURCE
code for a cross assembler for a TI-9900 was available.

	Apparently these little Hitlers would have me post 100K or so
bytes of source code to the entire net for the benefit of maybe 10 or
20 users.  That would have been ok - it was source itself.  But announce
that the source is available for direct mailing, saving many $$$'s in
phone bills by mailing directly to the interested parties - that's 
inappropriate use of net.sources.  Well, I think these twits who tell
me how to behave are inappropriate to net.sources.  I won't tell who
they are, but no doubt they will flame me again.

	Having been flamed once, I was a bit reluctant to post again,
but it really makes me MAD.  In light of all the recent postings of
copyright discussions, and the multitudes of "I didn't get part x
of something", simply announcing availability of source seems
perfectly appropriate.
**** FLAME OFF ****

	Having been the victim of two bad experiences of posting to
net.sources (I posted TVX, and the assembler announcement), I feel
I am qualified to submit the following suggestions so that others
may avoid some of my trauma.

	1.  If your source is really likely to be useful to a lot
of people, post to mod.sources.

	2.  If you have some relatively short code that might be
useful to a fair number of people, then net.souces seems fine.

	3.  If you have something long that is likely to be useful
to only a few people (like a 9900 cross assembler), I think it is
quite appropriate to announce you have the source, and will either
post or mail depending on the number of replies.  I've read in some
group that the cutoff is either around 20 or 100, depending on whose
study you believe - if you have more than 20 (or 100, maybe someone
knows the real number) interested sites, then post, otherwise mail
directly.  If you announce in this manner, be prepared for nasty mail
from the secret police. I say ignore it. Do what is RIGHT, and don't
be afraid of some twits.

	4.  In spite of all these cautions, please keep submitting
sources!  If you help anyone else, even a little, it is worth
all the trouble with flaky net software and flames from the secret
police.  You are really are performing a service.

	5.  For all the little Hitlers out there: maybe we need
something MORE than net.sources, net.sources.bugs, and net.sources.wanted.
There seems to be real need for a place to post to discuss things
about net.sources, and .bugs and .wanted don't fit the bill.
We need net.sources.d or something like that.  Flaming people
is NOT the answer.

--
Dr. Bruce E. Wampler
University of New Mexico
Department of Computer Science
Albuquerque, NM 87131

..{ucbvax | seismo!gatech | ihnp4!lanl}!unmvax!wampler