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From: sdo@u1100a.UUCP (Scott Orshan)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: use of bell.all
Message-ID: <654@u1100a.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-May-84 09:33:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: u1100a.654
Posted: Thu May  3 09:33:59 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 4-May-84 03:25:35 EDT
References: <1721@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway, NJ
Lines: 48

> Why can't people post to bell.all?  That's like saying that
> MIT has its own internal mail service, therefore no one may
> send mail to MIT.  If someone at AT&T, or any other site, has
> something that is of interest to the entire bell commuity, I
> don't see what is wrong with addressing a message to them.

Since I was the one who asked Mark to post the net.announce article
about bell newsgroups, I'll respond to this.

> After all, that is what newsgroups are for.

That may be what newsgroups are for, but "bell.all" is the
notation of a distribution for restricting where news goes.
There are many such local distributions throughout the net.
You only see them when they are tacked onto a newsgroup that you
get.  The main reasons for restricted distributions are to
post articles of interest only to one area (like autos for
sale in New Jersey), and to discuss proprietary information
within an organization.

It was never intended that people outside a distribution post
to that dist.  For one thing, if you're not part of that
dist., the article will never leave your machine.  It is
a weakness of the software that allows a local dist. to be carried
along with a global dist.  That is why you see newsgroup
lists such as: net.wanted,chi.wanted but not nj.wanted.
The MIT mail situation is not a valid comparison.  You can
certainly send electronic mail to an MIT gateway and have
an MIT network send it to its destination.  What we're
talking about here is not mail.  If AT&T wants to tell
something to the bell community (which is no longer
associated with AT&T, but nobody seems to get the point),
they have to tell it to everybody.

If you want to address an article to an outside distribution,
you have to address it to a distribution which contains
you and them, such as usa, or just plain net.

This is really not a subject that can be argued.  These are
long established USENET facts.  What you can do is propose
a new routing scheme, and a reworking of the software to
allow what you want.  But, please don't come on the net
and say "I wanna."

		Scott Orshan
		Bell Communications Research
		201-981-3064
		{ihnp4,pyuxww,allegra}!u1100a!sdo