Usenet 1994 January/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicjanuary1994.iso/sources/std_unix/Policy

Internet Message Format | 1990-10-30 | 12.5 KB

From: [e-mail] (John S. Quarterman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: comp.std.unix Policy
Reply-To: [e-mail]

This is a policy statement for comp.std.unix.

This is Volume 22 of comp.std.unix.
These volumes are purely for administrative convenience.
Feel free to continue any previous discussion or to start new ones.

Topic.

The USENET newsgroup comp.std.unix, also known as the mailing list
[e-mail], is for discussions of standards related to
the UNIX operating system, particularly of IEEE P1003, or POSIX,
including IEEE 1003.1, 1003.2, etc.

Other related standards bodies and subjects include but are not limited to
    IEEE 1201 and IEEE 1238,
    ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG15 (the ISO and IEC version of POSIX),
    the U.S. and other Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs) to WG15,
    the X3.159 Programming Language C Standard by the ANSI X3J11 committee,
    ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG14 (the ISO and IEC version of X3.159),
    ANSI X3J16 on the C++ programming language,
    ANSI X3B11.1 on WORM File Systems,
    the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST),
    and their Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS),
    X/Open and their X/Open Portability Guide (XPG),
    the Open Software Foundation (OSF),
    UNIX International (UI),
    the UniForum Technical Committee,
    the AFUU Working Groups,
    PortSoft,
    AT&T System V Interface Definition (SVID),
    System V Release 3, System V Release 4,
    4.2BSD, 4.3BSD, 4.4BSD,
    Tenth Edition UNIX, Plan 9 from Bell Labs,
    Mach, Chorus, Amoeba,
    and the USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee.

Moderator.

The newsgroup comp.std.unix and the mailing list [e-mail]
is moderated.  The moderator is John S. Quarterman.

Disclaimer.

Postings by any committee member (especially including me) in this
newsgroup do not represent any position (including any draft, proposed
or actual, of a standard) of the committee as a whole or of any
subcommittee unless explicitly stated otherwise in such remarks.

* UNIX is a Registered Trademark of AT&T.
** IEEE is a Trademark of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics
    Engineers, Inc.
*** POSIX is not a trademark.
Various other names mentioned above may be trademarks.
I hope their owners will not object if I do not list them all here.


Postings.

Submissions for posting to the newsgroup and comments about the newsgroup
(including requests to subscribe or unsubscribe to the mailing list)
should go to two different addresses:

        DNS address            UUCP source route
Submissions    [e-mail]        uunet!std-unix
Comments    [e-mail]    uunet!std-unix-request

The hostname cs.utexas.edu may be used in place of uunet.uu.net or uunet.
Permission to post to the newsgroup is assumed for mail to std-unix.
Permission to post is not assumed for mail to std-unix-request,
unless explicitly granted in the mail.  Mail to my personal addresses
will be treated like mail to std-unix-request if it obviously refers
to the newsgroup.

The mailing list is distributed on the Internet, UUCP, and elsewhere.
There is a redistribution list on BITNET for BITNET, EARN, and NetNorth.
Please send submissions from those networks to [e-mail]
nonetheless, because messages sent to the BITNET LISTSERV will not reach
the whole list.

If you have access to USENET, it is better (more efficient, cheaper,
less effort for me to manage) to subscribe to the newsgroup comp.std.unix
than to the mailing list.  Submissions should still go to the above
addresses, although many (perhaps most) USENET hosts will forward
attempts to post directly to the newsgroup to the moderator.

Posted articles may originate from uunet.uu.net, longway.tic.com, tic.com,
cs.utexas.edu, or usenix.org.  There are also occasional guest moderators,
who may post from still other machines.  Guest moderators are announced
in advance by the regular moderator.

Archives.

Archives for comp.std.unix or [e-mail] may be found on UUNET.
Most of them are compressed, so if you don't have compress, get it first
(it's in the comp.sources.unix archives).

The comp.std.unix archives may be retrieved by anonymous FTP over the Internet.
Connect to uunet.uu.net with FTP and log in as user anonymous with password
guest.

The current volume is in the file
        ~ftp/comp.std.unix/archive
or
        ~ftp/comp.std.unix/volume.22
The previous volume may be retrieved as
        ~ftp/comp.std.unix/volume.21.Z
and so forth for more ancient volumes.

For hosts with direct UUCP connections to UUNET, UUCP transfer from
host uunet should work with, for example,
        uucp uunet!'~ftp/comp.std.unix/archive' archive
You will have to put a backslash before the ! (i.e., \!)
if you're using the C shell.

The output of "cd ~ftp/comp.std.unix; ls -l" is in
        ~ftp/comp.std.unix/list
and the output of "cd ~ftp/comp.std.unix; ls -l *" is in
        ~ftp/comp.std.unix/longlist

For further details, retrieve the file
        ~ftp/comp.std.unix/README


General submission acceptance policy.

Submissions are never ignored (although they might be overlooked).
If you don't see your article posted and you don't get a mailed
response from the moderator, your submission probably didn't arrive.
However, travel schedules and other business sometimes intervene
(and for that matter it can take many hours for a submission to
get to the moderator and the posted message to get back to the poster),
so you may sometimes not see anything for a few days.  If you wait
and still don't see anything, try sending again.

I usually post about 90% of all submissions.  However, as moderator,
I retain the right to reject submissions.  If a submission does not
appear relevant to comp.std.unix, it is sent back to the submittor with
a note saying why it is not appropriate.  Usually this is because it
just doesn't fit the topic of the newsgroup, in which case I suggest
another newsgroup.  Sometimes it is because someone else has already
given the same answer to a question, in which case I ask if the
submittor really wants it posted.  Occasionally I suggest editing that
would make an article more appropriate to the newsgroup.

Very occasionally I reject an article outright:  this is almost always
because it contains ad hominem attacks, which are never permitted
in this technical newsgroup.  There are many other potential reasons
for rejection, however, such as inclusion of copyrighted material.
Fortunately, most such problems have not come up.

Note that while technical postings on technical subjects are encouraged,
postings about the politics of standardization are also appropriate,
since it is impossible to separate politics from standards.

Crosspostings are discouraged.  Submissions such as ``how do I find
xyz piece of software'' or ``is the x implementation better than the
y implementation'' that come in for multiple newsgroups usually get
sent back to the submittor with a suggestion to resubmit without
comp.std.unix in the Newsgroups: line.  Sometimes I'll crosspost if
there's clear relevance to comp.std.unix, but I always add a
Followup-To: line in an attempt to direct further discussion to a
single newsgroup, usually comp.std.unix.  This policy is useful because
crossposting often produces verbose traffic of little relevance to
comp.std.unix.



Editorial policy.

When posting a submission, I sometimes make changes to it.  These
are of three types:  headers and trailers; comments; and typographical.

Headers and trailers

Header changes include:
+ Cleaning up typos, particularly in Subject: lines.
+ Rationalizing From: lines to contain only one address syntax,
    either hosta!hostb!host!user or, preferably, user@domain.
+ Adding a Reply-To: line.  This usually points to the newsgroup
    submission address in the mailing list, but to the submitter
    in the newsgroup, for reasons too messy to detail here.
+ Adding the Approved: line.
+ Deleting any Distribution: line, as detailed in the next paragraph.

The only distribution used in comp.std.unix is no distribution, i.e.,
worldwide.  If it's not of worldwide interest, it doesn't belong in
comp.std.unix.  Anything pertaining to the IEEE/CS TCOS standards
or committees (e.g., IEEE 1003, IEEE 1201), the ANSI X3.159 Programming
Language C Standard (X3J11), or the ISO 9945 POSIX work (ISO/IEC JTC1
SC22 WG15) is of worldwide interest.  If a submission arrives with a
Distribution:  line, such as na or us, I delete that line.

Every article has a trailing line of the form
>    Volume-Number: Volume 22, Number 42
This allows the reader to notice articles lost in transmission and
permits the moderator to more easily catalog articles in the archives.
Volumes usually change after about 100 articles, but are purely for
administrative convenience; discussions begun in one volume should
be continued into the next volume.

Also, signatures that are excessively long may be truncated.



Comments

Comments by the moderator are sometimes added to clarify obscure
issues.  These are always enclosed in square brackets with the
closing mark ``-mod,'' [ like this -mod ].  Sometimes entire articles
appear that are written by the moderator:  these always end with
a signature that includes the words ``moderator, comp.std.unix.''

Comments by the editor of the USENIX Standards Watchdog Reports
sometimes appear in those reports.  Such comments are always
enclosed in square brackets and begin with the word ``Editor:''
[ Editor: like this ].

Comments by the publisher of the USENIX Standards Watchdog Reports
sometimes appear in those reports.  Such comments are always
enclosed in square brackets and end with the mark ``-pub,''
[ like this -pub ].

Entire articles may appear by the editor or publisher of the
Watchdog Reports, and those are always identified by the signature.

Typographical

People submitting articles sometimes enclose parenthetical comments
in brackets [] instead of parentheses ().  I usually change these
to parentheses to avoid confusion with the above conventions for
comments by the moderator, editor, or publisher.

Obvious misspellings, such as ``it's'' for the possesive or
``its'' as a contraction of ``it is'' are corrected.

Excess white space is deleted.

Lines longer than 80 characters are reformatted.

Redundant quoted headers are often omitted.

Very long quotations of previous articles are sometimes shortened.



Common kinds of postings.

There are several sets of postings that reoccur in comp.std.unix
at more or less regular intervals.  Here are three of the most common.

Calendar of UNIX-Related Events

Susanne W. Smith <[e-mail]> of Windsound Consulting of Edmonds,
Washington and John S. Quarterman <[e-mail]> of Texas Internet Consulting
(TIC) of Austin, Texas publish a combined calendar of planned conferences,
workshops, or standards meetings related to the UNIX operating system.
These appear about every other month in four articles with these titles:
    Calendar of UNIX-related Events
    Access to UNIX User Groups
    Access to UNIX-Related Publications
    Access to UNIX-Related Standards
The first three are posted to
    comp.std.unix,comp.unix.questions,comp.org.usenix
The one about standards is posted only to comp.std.unix.

These calendar postings are a private project of Windsound and TIC,
although they are coordinated with various groups such as USENIX, EUUG,
AUUG, JUS, UniForum, and IEEE TCOS.  Smith and Quarterman encourage
others to reuse this information, but ask for proper acknowledgment.

USENIX Standards Watchdog Reports

The USENIX Association sponsors a set of reports after each quarterly
meeting of the IEEE 1003 and IEEE 1201 standards committees.  These
reports are written by volunteers who are already attending committee
meetings and are edited by the Watchdog Report Editor, who is Jeffrey
S. Haemer <[e-mail]>.  Reports on other committees, such as X3J11,
are also included when available.  These reports are published in
comp.std.unix/[e-mail] and ;login:  The Newsletter of the
USENIX Association.  They are also available for publication elsewhere.

EUUG/USENIX ISO Monitor Project

The European UNIX systems Users Group (EUUG) and the USENIX Association
jointly sponsor an observer to the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG15 (ISO POSIX)
standards committee.  This observer, Dominic Dunlop <[e-mail]>,
writes a report after each WG15 meeting, of which there are usually
two a year.  These reports are published in the EUUG Newsletter
(EUUGN), :login;, and comp.std.unix.  They are also available for
publication elsewhere.

Archives of the EUUG/USENIX ISO Monitor Reports, the USENIX Standards
Watchdog Reports, and the Windsound/TIC Calendar of UNIX-Related Events
may be found on uunet.uu.net.  Retrieve ~ftp/comp.std.unix/README for
details.

John S. Quarterman, moderator, comp.std.unix and [e-mail].