Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!inria!axis!philip
From: philip@coms.axis.fr (Philip Peake)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: UUCP map for u.fra.0 (from comp.mail.maps)
Message-ID: <1989Jul22.101400.7588@coms.axis.fr>
Date: 22 Jul 89 10:14:00 GMT
References: <7106@ki4pv.uucp> <1989Jul17.085440.9421@coms.axis.fr> <2444@cbnewsh.ATT.COM>
Organization: Axis Digital, Paris, France
Lines: 82

In article <2444@cbnewsh.ATT.COM>, wcs@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (Bill Stewart 201-949-0705 ho95c.att.com!wcs) writes:
> In article <1989Jul19.120102.19751@coms.axis.fr> philip@coms.axis.fr (Philip Peake) writes:
> ]This is just an example of refusing to understand how things *SHOULD*
> ]be done - all you Americans have got it wrong! :-)
> 	A typical example of stubborn French conceit :-)
> 	We should never have let DeGaulle run France.

Yeah. Actually, I'm British, maybe I have been living here too long ...
 
> ]Not every site in the world uses these maps, nor do they need to.
> ]In europe there are a handful of sites who use the maps.
> 	First of all, a large number of sites in the US use
> 	pathalias  to generate email routing information, and the
> 	rest either forward their mail through a site that does or
> 	use Usenet Path: lines for replies (a disreputable practice!).
> 	Intelligent mailers make the maps useful for everyone.

I know, its the 'large number' that I take issue with.
Its really not needed - if things were organised more there, no one
would be more than two, or three at most hops from a bacckbone site,
say one per state - then any site need only know of sites connected
directly to it, and how to reach the backbone - thats the default route.

For example, to reach me from the US, you can use any of the following
'routes':

	....!uunet!mcvax!axis!philip
	....!uunet!mcvax!inria!axis!philip

The second is the 'real' route - but ALL european backbones reroute
ALL mail - putting the 'inria' site in there is redundant.

But, I know its not so macho if you don't have a disk full of
uucp maps, and spend 5 hours every night churning away with pathalias ..
 
> ]System 5.3 soon - because this is only protected by copyright, and I
> ]don't suppose that you agree with that either ?
> 
> 	First of all, the primary protection on AT&T UNIX software
> 	is not copyright, it's contract law - you can only get a
> 	copy if you sign a contract that says you won't give it to
> 	unauthorized people, and our crew of big nasty ugly lawyers
> 	will bust you for violating your contract if you do.

yes, I don't know why AT&T started putting copyright notices on
everything, beccause, as you say, thre is a contract, and a licence
agreement - and the licence conditions are *much* more restrictive
than a copyright .. I suppose it was to cover themselves in the
event of a 'leak' - once somone dumps something on my machine, without
me asking, how am I supposed to be covered by a licence agreement I
havn't signed -hence the copyright notices ?
 
> 	The US government has recently signed the Berne copyright
> 	agreement, which says that we agree to protect copyright of
> 	other signers to the agreement, and apparently says that
> 	anything is copyrighted, even without explicit copyright
> 	notice, unless the author renounces copyright.

So, in taking your article, and including sections of it in my reply,
I suppose that I will give yet another reasont to the big nasty ugly
lawyers to come after me (you forgot the copyright waiver :-).
 
> 	The problem is that, in the past, the maps have not been
> 	copyrighted, and it never occurred to anyone that they would be
> 	- the network is a cooperative activity.  The primary
> 	readers of the maps have been software rather than humans,
> 	and it never occurred to most of us to make our software
> 	check for copyrights - who would publish a map and then say
> 	you can't use it for the purpose one uses maps for?

No one.
That was never the intention - I have explained why it was done
in other articles, no one seems to have argued with the reasons why
it was done - the only problem was that there was nothing to explicitly
say that it could be used for its intended purpose, something which
seems too obvious to need saying, in my opinion.
But then whereas every little boy in europe wants to be
a fireman or astroanut, it seems that every little American boy
wants to grow up to be a big bad nasty ugly AT&T lawyer ... :-)

Philip