Re: bincancels in linux.kernel

Rene Herman (rene.herman@keyaccess.nl)
Tue, 3 Dec 2002 04:49:13 +0100


On Tuesday 03 December 2002 02:49, Andrew Gierth wrote:

> I don't personally consider that the fact that a group is gatewayed
> from a mailing list to be significant when deciding how to apply Usenet
> policies to it.

Andrew, please note that I as a user of linux.kernel do actually consider it
significant. LKML (the gated list) is not part of Usenet and the mere fact
that at some point it is gated to a newsgroup and transported further via
NNTP doesn't make it a part. It's merely a service to people (like me) who
find a news interface more convenient and/or have trouble dealing with the
large volume of messages via mail.

Furthermore (or "that aside", if you want ... ), although I guess I could
conceivably be sympathetic to your cause of ridding Usenet from as much
in-appropriate content as possible, linux kernel patches, including binary
encoded ones, are not in fact in-appropriate content for linux.kernel, either
the list or the newsgroup.

Even on the mailing-list plain text patches are preffered, but when the patch
is large gzipping it is actually recommended:

http://www.tux.org/lkml/#s4-1

You for example today cancelled a completely appropriate post from Art Haas
(http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0212.0/0302.html) and I will
admit that actually annoys me quite a bit.

> Erik> The gated list is linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org (Cc), a list to
> Erik> which sometimes binary patches are posted. IMHO binaries are
> Erik> acceptable in linux.kernel.
>
> well, I would have to disagree (even if you don't think that binaries
> coming via the mailing list would be a problem, there is still the
> question of binaries posted via news

Fortunately, linux-kernel (the list) has active filtering itself, so anything
in-appropriate comming in through news will be filtered out in the same way
as the ones comming in through mail. Of course that doesn't help us NNTP
readers, but I guess we'll just have to deal with that. LKML is not strictly
non-binary-only, so cancelling simply on the criterium of binary attachments
is very inappropriate.

Might I therefore respectfully suggest you keep the bin-cancelling suspended?

Rene.

P.S. offline for a while, so will not be able to reply quickly.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/