Path: utzoo!yunexus!ists!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!mccall!tp
From: tp@mccall.uucp
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: New newsgroup hierarchy
Message-ID: <1665.25659e6e@mccall.uucp>
Date: 18 Nov 89 18:24:45 GMT
Article-I.D.: mccall.1665.25659e6e
References: <1618.25614348@mccall.uucp> <1989Nov16.172110.21492@utzoo.uucp> <91457@pyramid.pyramid.com> <1640@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Followup-To: news.admin
Organization: The McCall Pattern Co., Manhattan, KS, USA
Lines: 28

>   There are lots of distributions now, such as alt, which are
> organizational rather than geographic. Since you're a reasonable person
> I assume your desire for your own namespace comes from a bad source of
> technical information rather than an assumption that vms is more
> important than the other operating systems on the net.

Neither. One major reason for doing it this way is to not burden the
usenet. We think this will become a large net in its own right over time.
(We may of course be wrong, only time will tell.) If that happens, I
suspect many unix sites now carrying it will drop it (which we will
understand and be thankfull for their help in getting started). 

The other major reason is to not have to live by usenet's rules. You can
think of this as organizational. This hierarchy is a project of the VMSnet
Working Group of the VAX SIG of DECUS. We expect to hammer out our own
rules of conduct, administration, etc. We didn't want to fight the (largely
unix based) user community of usenet every inch of the way. I think this
will turn out to be easier on our sanity and yours. It also relieves you of
the necessity of carrying the groups or messing with your sys file to
filter them out, if you don't want them or disagree with their existance.

Besides, vmsnet exists now. It is available from a wide variety of sites
widely dispersed on the net. If we had tried to do something within usenet,
the arguments about it would just be starting.
-- 
Terry Poot (800)255-2762, in Kansas (913)776-3683
The McCall Pattern Company, 615 McCall Rd., Manhattan, KS 66502, USA
UUCP: rutgers!ksuvax1!mccall!tp   Internet: tp%mccall@ksuvax1.cis.ksu.edu