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From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,news.admin
Subject: Re: Scary Thought ...
Message-ID: <1878@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Mon, 9-Mar-87 13:23:34 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.1878
Posted: Mon Mar  9 13:23:34 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Mar-87 06:24:07 EST
References: <919@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV> <1112@altnet.UUCP>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
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Xref: mnetor comp.mail.uucp:321 news.admin:233

My experience with the micro people interested in uuslave is similar to
Lauren's with UULINK.  Mostly people want it for email or for automated
file transfer.  A few people want to build gateways with it, e.g. a
Fidonet<->Unix gateway package that would interconnect the IBM PC-based
Fido mail network with the UUCP mail network, similar to the way the
Arpanet is now linked with UUCP mail.  Personally I'll be glad to have
another few thousand people whose communication with me can be
computer-mediated rather than conducted at the mercy of letters and
telephones.

Administratively there is not much problem -- uuslave sites will look
like Unix uucp sites.  Since many will be hung off existing major sites
(e.g. at universities), many will naturally fall under an existing
domain, with no overhead to network routing or table size.

It's a pain to wedge the uucp and netnews software onto the brain
damaged micro operating systems of today.  Remember -- 11 char file
names with the only dot after the 8th char!  No multitasking.  No
delayed execution.  Can't listen on the phone while the user is
typing.  Directories a recent extension.  Etc.  The Amiga is the only
semi-cheap non-Unix machine that could run a serious Unix-like uucp,
mail, and news system.  It's possible to wedge it onto anything, but
the authors of micro software that uuslave must coordinate with for
modem access (e.g.  when someone calls in, what program is listening?)
are so far uninterested in making it easy to run anything but their own
software anyway.  Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Also remember that netnews takes a signifigant amount of disk space and
administrative time.  Most users won't pay that price; The people who
run a full netnews feed on a micro will have to be at least as sharp as
the folks who administer news on a Unix machine.
-- 
John Gilmore  {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu   gnu@ingres.berkeley.edu
Love your country but never trust its government.
		     -- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvania