Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL!WANCHO From: WANCHO@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL ("Frank J. Wancho") Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: Why does SIMTEL exist? Message-ID: Date: 29 Oct 89 21:21:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 35 Mark, Good question. The answer is that the original intent was two-fold: to provide a number-cruncher for unclassified FORTRAN programs and have a host with net connectivity to communicate with others. But, by the time we got the machine six years ago, most of the available FORTRAN applications were classified. There was, however, a large Army community of isolated users who needed net mail capability and had no machines of their own. We provided (and still provide) that service to those users and others in DoD and federal agencies and their contractors. Our paying customers are now the principal reason this machine exists, and the public domain collection access is incidental. At about the same that this machine came on the net, another project needed to be moved off its host up at MIT. That was a mailing list for CP/M users and its directories of public domain software. The directories were created to reduce the mail burden to announcements of new arrivals rather than sending the files out as mail to the list. We had spare space on our boot disk, and the lists and its directories were moved here. Because we make the collections available via anonymous ftp, ostensibly for Army users, we cannot prevent and do not intend to prevent access by anyone else. One reason is that the wider the audience, the better our chances of getting something back which is an improvement on what we already have. And, so it goes. There's much more to the story, such as the reason we tolerate shareware, which is an extension of one of the concepts of the original project - making products available for try-before-buy. I hope that answers your questions. --Frank