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From: info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA
Newsgroups: fa.info-vax
Subject: Re: Mail to non VMS machines
Message-ID: <5460@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 12-Mar-85 18:12:13 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.5460
Posted: Tue Mar 12 18:12:13 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Mar-85 07:44:19 EST
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Organization: University of California at Berkeley
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From: medin@ucbarpa (Milo Medin)


Did you really expect anything different?  The bigger they are
the less responsive they are.  I personally wwouldn't like
to see vaxmail kludged to run SMTP.  Now, TWG makes a mailer patch
for their TCP/IP stuff, but its ugly, and reply doesnt work right.
It cant, not without messing with vaxmail itself.  And why would
you want to use vaxmail?  No store and forward, no aliases, no
cc, etc...   Its just like that Chevron commercial, are you tired
of being said no too?  Now, I understand Dave Kashtan is working
on porting a version of MM to VMS.  Tie that in with SMTP
and you have a real mail system, not a toy like vaxmail.  I agree
that people don't want to learn more than one mailer, but I don't
agree that mailer should be vaxmail.  Anyone who has ever used
Unix mail (even v7) or TOPS-20 MM gets frustrated with vaxmail.
And the Rand MH package makes Unix mail even better.  

But then there is the issue of software support, and that has been
raised before.  I'll take a widely distributed piece of useful
code (with source) over a supported piece of non-useful code any day.
Noone supports 4.2 per se, but its alive and well today,and its
because its fixable.  If I find a bug (esp. a security bug), I
want it fixed NOW, even if I have to do it, or get someone else
to do it, rather than fill out an SPR and wait 6 mons. for a 
new release of the software.  Even then, DEC may not have fixed it
the right way.  

I deal with both 4.2 and VMS machines all the time, and I generally
deal with mail on my 4.2 machines.  The reason I don't do it all
the time, is that there is no aliasing or automatic mail forwarding
in Vaxmail.  The TWG stuff does implement aliases though, but only
for messages coming in with SMTP.  

If DEC wants to do the right thing (listening DEC?), port the
Rand Mailer over....  And don't rewrite it in bliss....

					Milo