Some closing remarks about the issue of NetBSD on Aminet. The responses
to my proposal were mixed. The main arguments against the integration 
of NetBSD on Aminet were:


- "NetBSD without support makes no sense."

Totally disagree. People who don't need support, or items that don't
need support (e.g. small compiled NetBSD apps) are perfectly happy with 
an unsupported, but further reaching release channel. Most people need 
no support for most apps.


- "NetBSD should not be distributed on Aminet because you can't support it"

Correct, I can't. However any support that I (or anyone else) alone could 
give would be totally insignificant compared the the number of users that 
NetBSD has.


- "We'll have to support all those new NetBSD users"

If you don't want to support, don't support. Limiting the NetBSD distribution
is definitely the wrong approach to reducing workload; you punish all the 
people who don't *need* support but currently have no access to NetBSD.


- "It's stupid to distribute only the Amiga version of NetBSD"

What sense would it make for Joe A. User if he got a DEC ALPHA version
of NetBSD on Aminet? Let's leave that to specialized sites.


- "Aminet cripples the file names"

Only about 10% need to be truncated. Replacing .tar.gz by .tgz has no 
disadvantages after you learn what  .tgz means (just as the Aminet 
users would have to get to know .tar.gz)


- "NetBSD on Aminet is a waste of resources"

The resources required for NetBSD are negligible; mirroring NetBSD 
increases Aminet traffic by 0.05% but saves a lot more than that through
shorter paths to the end users. Since NetBSD will be less than 10%
of Aminet, it will reduce the life span of files at partial mirrors
by less than 10% (or almost nothing if NetBSD files are expired first)


Conclusion: NetBSD will be part of Aminet, eventually. At first, I'll 
just create a bsd directory for those who want to upload. As soon as 
I get around (could take a while, graduating), I'll integrate the older
files from uni-regensburg, for most of which I got Hubert Feyrer's 
generous permission.

   -Urban