Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!pyrnj!mirror!xanth!john From: john@xanth.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix,news.groups,news.sysadmin Subject: Re: Request for special USENIX Meeting Message-ID: <756@xanth.UUCP> Date: Thu, 26-Mar-87 01:22:01 EST Article-I.D.: xanth.756 Posted: Thu Mar 26 01:22:01 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 28-Mar-87 01:00:17 EST References: <1486@hplabsc.UUCP> Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va. Lines: 80 Xref: utgpu comp.org.usenix:91 news.groups:539 news.sysadmin:80 In article <1486@hplabsc.UUCP>, taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) writes: > [a previous copy of this posting may have escaped my machine before being > killed. If so, please ignore it and read/reply to this one instead.] And from a couple of followups I've seen, it was a hot one indeed! Anyway, while this doesn't answer all of your objections by any means, I really feel like I need to reply to this: > For example, the recent announcement of the charge to register a host > with the "UUCP Mapping Project" was extremely disturbing - it is a > transition from a totally free system (e.g. the pathalias solution) > to a system that *costs quite a bit of money*. The purported reason > was for administration and overhead costs. > > I don't accept that. Furthermore, I see no reason why we couldn't > have developed a solution that allows the power and freedom of > the domain naming scheme, with routing by a given domain to a specific > 'server' machine, and then posted it to Usenet and made it available > via the Usenix Distribution Tape and other means. Well, Dave [in the voice of the HAL 9000], the software to do this *is* free, publicly available, and was posted to Usenet in mod.sources. It is called smail, and was written by the same people that you are criticizing. And it is still "the pathalias solution", made more flexible. And nobody's forcing any transition - you can still use the same uucp routing mechanisms you always have. Mel Pleasant's even taking special pains to make sure that places that have moved their map entries to the domain parts of the map are still recognizable and reachable via their old uucp names. And I'm sure that Rick Adams would be glad to send you the gatewaying software mentioned in the UUCP Project's domain registration information packet (and maybe the smail documentation - they overlap by about 99%, I think), if you have an ARPANET site willing to forward for you. But *you* go ahead and try to contact HOSTMASTER@SRI-NIC.ARPA (@NIC.SRI.COM?) to register your new UUCP only domain, and *you* explain that the reason you're not going through the channels worked out between the UUCP Project and the NIC to register your domain is because you are trying to avoid the $150/year. Yes, you might get away with it, but will the next 200 applications? "Get real." But, of course, you don't need to worry about this yourself, since your domain is HP.COM, and HP.COM is already registered, either by virtue of being directly on the DDN or through CSNET (I don't know which). Similarly, we are ODU.EDU, registered via CSNET. And neither we nor you need to pay a dime to the UUCP Project to - run smail on our machines, thereby making us Class 3 UUCP hosts (recognizing rmail do.ma.in!user) - list our uucp hosts in the UUCP map