*BSD News Article 26421


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From: bogstad@gauss.cs.jhu.edu (Bill Bogstad)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: <Proposal> Rename of the 386bsd groups
Followup-To: comp.os.386bsd.questions,news.groups
Date: 23 Jan 1994 14:48:03 -0500
Organization: The Johns Hopkins University, Computer Science Department
Lines: 50
Message-ID: <2huk9j$7j4@gauss.cs.jhu.edu>
References: <ETLDNCN.94Jan21133424@paddington.ericsson.se> <CJzrsG.I6s@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> <1994Jan21.214820.10404@sophia.smith.edu> <JKH.94Jan22123509@whisker.lotus.ie>
NNTP-Posting-Host: gauss.cs.jhu.edu

In article <JKH.94Jan22123509@whisker.lotus.ie>,
Jordan K. Hubbard <jkh@whisker.lotus.ie> wrote:
>In article <1994Jan21.214820.10404@sophia.smith.edu> jfieber@sophia.smith.edu (J Fieber) writes:
>   Some options:
>
>   comp                    no arguments
>   os/unix                 any opinions here?
>   net2/net2bsd/bsdnet2    ???
>
>There's another option:
>
>   leave it alone	   ???
>
>
>:-).  Seriously, I don't particularly want to see a wholly useless
>flame war start up over what to rename the groups, and would be just
>as happy if they stayed the way they are!  It ain't broke, so why fix
>it?  Everybody has come to understand the current purpose of the
>groups, and certainly wouldn't be any more clued by "bsdnet2" than
>they would be "386bsd" if they're one of those who know nothing about
>it at all, so if you're not doing the newbies any favors and you're
>not helping the "old hands" then just who would the name change be
>targeted at?

	Ahh, but there were some who thought it was broken from the
beginning.  (I being among them.)  We knew that the freely distributable BSD
community was not restricted to the 386 (486 and now Pentium) and wouldn't
long be restricted to just the Intel architecture (MIPS and others already
appearing).  We suggested that subgroups under comp.unix.bsd or at least
something of a more generic BSDish nature would be better.  Yes, some argued
that we couldn't call it comp.unix.bsd.* because of possible legal
entanglements from AT&T (as if the name of the newsgroup would somehow hide
the fact that it was all based on UCB's NET2 release).  Newsgroups seem to
last forever and as you are pointing out are difficult to change.  How many
people now actually use a 386bsd release as oppossed to NetBSD or FreeBSD?
How long will it be before most people aren't using 386s (not too mention
non-Intel architectures)?  But as you say, it may be too late to change it;
I can't say.  Perhaps next time though people will think about what they are
doing before they rush to create newsgroups; but I tend to doubt it.

				Bill Bogstad
				bogstad@cs.jhu.edu

P.S. I've tried to set up the followup-to line for this posting to send
replies to this messaage to both comp.os.386bsd.questions & news.groups.
Since news.groups is where discussions about newsgroups administration takes
place.  If you don't think that is a good idea; then be sure to edit it out
before following up to this posting.  I did NOT post this note to news.groups
since that (IMHO) makes this discussion more formal and will let others
decide whether to do so or not.