This is simply  the way the program LISTSERV uses  for UUENCODE works (it
has its own reasons which were explained  to me once and which I promptly
forgot  - it  was  designed for  PC  software). UUENCODE  is  not a  file
transfer format  like Netdata,  it is  a way of  translating a  stream of
binary bytes into a stream of  non-binary bytes that mailers will usually
leave alone.  In the  particular case  of transient  MODULEs, there  is a
rather legitimate case for wanting to  use UUENCODE to retrieve the file,
but what about regular MODULE's?
 
  Eric