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Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards,comp.arch
Subject: Re: RFS vs. NFS
Message-ID: <7539@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 24 Mar 88 19:49:00 GMT
References: <326@ivory.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <7765@apple.Apple.Com> <4477@megaron.arizona.edu>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 15

In article <4477@megaron.arizona.edu> lm@megaron.arizona.edu (Larry McVoy) writes:
>minutes deciding to dump RFS and add TCP/IP and NFS.  I think it was
>mainly a compatibility decision.  

It is clearly a marketing decision.  Widely-used existing "standards"
are in demand and others generally are not.  We have some RFS and
Starlan-compatible systems here, but since the rest of our network
is built around NFS and TCP/IP and does not know how to support RFS
or Starlan, we obviously don't use them.  (By the way, I don't know
if Starlan is techincally worth using, but RFS would be.)  For similar
reasons we're not using ISO TP4, X.25, and other possibly worthwhile
facilities.

I must say that removing RFS from a UNIX System V Release 3 port is
a serious mistake; adding TCP/IP and NFS is perfectly reasonable.