Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!udel!haven!adm!cmcl2!panix!alexis
From: alexis@panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aux
Subject: Re: uucp scripts (continued)
Message-ID: <1990Nov14.103251.13972@panix.uucp>
Date: 14 Nov 90 10:32:51 GMT
References: <46455@apple.Apple.COM> <1990Nov12.075943.2355@panix.uucp> <46529@apple.Apple.COM>
Organization: PANIX - Public Access Unix Systems of NY
Lines: 42

In article <46529@apple.Apple.COM> ksand@Apple.COM (Kent Sandvik) writes:
> [ I, Alexis Rosen, write about sendmail and its cf, as shipped with A/UX ]
>>User friendly? How about mail-friendly? I don't care how ugly it is. I just
>>want it to work the way it's supposed to. I can't wait five years for X.500
>>to get my mail across town, I can walk it over considerably faster than that.
>
>>A/UX 2.0 is a wonderful product. But I'm afraid you're defending one of its
>>weakest parts...
>
>Note that sendmail is a universal mail switching UNIX application, and if you
>think it's weak, don't complain on A/UX 2.0 then.

Sorry, but I think you're missing the point. Apple didn't _have_ to include
sendmail. It didn't _have_ to include NFS, job control, SLIP, or sh for that
matter. But if you want people to buy your unix, you have to provide all the
right tools. And further, if you're Apple, and you're selling A/UX as easy-
to-configure (which, mostly, it is), and a real solution to conectivity issues
in both Mac and Unix worlds, well, you've got to take that extra step. But
I'm not so sure that a facility to send mail between two machines on a LAN
is an "extra step." It's damn well required, by me, and by most others. Now
if you want to include something other than sendmail, which does enough of
the job for most people, then fine. But that's not what was done. So the tools
that _are_ provided must work. That means we need a working sendmail.cf, and
I don't care _who_ wrote it originally. Apple sold it to me, Apple has to
make sure it works.

(And if you think _that's_ grim, wait until you talk to a real business
customer, instead of a hacker who can give up enough sleep to make it work...)

>	Personally I think its
>amusing that marketing people talk a lot about UNIX networking capabilitites.
>
>...well, they have never done any sendmail.cf hacking... And I hope that
>the UNIX community does not create such burdensome standards programs
>in future.

Amen to that!

---
Alexis Rosen
Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix, NY
{cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexis