Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!amdahl!ems!com50!com2serv!com2sun!ahby
From: ahby@com2sun.C2S.MN.ORG (15Shane P. McCarron)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: smail wants you to register a domain (using Path: for replies)
Message-ID: <117@com2serv.C2S.MN.ORG>
Date: 30 Aug 88 17:39:59 GMT
References: <70@volition.dec.com> <71@volition.dec.com> <935@cbnews.ATT.COM> <44401@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> <946@cbnews.ATT.COM> <355@bungia.Bungia.MN.ORG> <998@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: usenet@com2serv.C2S.MN.ORG
Reply-To: ahby@com2sun.UUCP (15Shane P. McCarron)
Organization: ComSquared Systems, St. Paul, MN
Lines: 255

Before we start this, let me say that I really do applaud the CONCEPT
behind the UUCP Project.  UUCP Zone sites do need to become real
Internet citizens in some way, and sites that don't think this is a
priority still need to have some way of being known to the rest of the
world.  The UUCP Project satisfies these goals, but not in a way that I
consider to be maximally beneficial.

Now...  We come here not to bury the UUCP Project, but to criticize
it, reform it, and if necessary, destroy it utterly:

In article <998@cbnews.ATT.COM> mark@cbnews.ATT.COM (Mark Horton) writes:
>The UUCP Project provides a number of public services.  These services
>include the u.* files in the UUCP map and the smail software.  

The u. files are administered not by the UUCP Project, but by a group
of volunteers loosely coordinated by the UUCP Project.  This is an
important point.  These volunteers do not necessarily give a damn
about the policies set down by the Project, although they are
ostensibly a part of it.  This is considerably different than the
point below - what Mark should have said was "The UUCP Project
coordinators are volunteers"

>We are
>run by a group of volunteers, in order to keep our costs down to the
>bare minimum.  

The minimum cost for a project like this should be zero.  You are
storing the maps at Rutgers, and I doubt that they are charging you
for storage or connect time.  Your mail connection point, stargate, is
a 3B1 (as mentioned below), and does consume some resources.  My 3B1
is costing me $25 per month in electricity, and another $50 per month
in phone lines.  However, it would cost me much of this regardless of
whether it was the local hub for the MN.ORG domain park or not (see below).

>In order to have representation
>at necessary meetings, pay for our computer and phone bills, and other
>misc expenses, 

Wait a second...  You are using this money to get to meetings?  What
kind of meetings?  If you mean Usenix, your organizations (AT&T,
Rutgers?) usually pay for this kind of thing, don't they?  But I
digress...

>we offered a new service: registration of ARPA domains
>for UUCP based organizations.  

Whoa!  Wait again!  You offered this registration service SOLELY so
that you could cover your expenses?  Well, I guess I can see why you
wouldn't want to cut the fees.  Not very altruistic or flattering,
Mark.

>We set up the UUCP Zone as a network of
>UUCP organizations with domains, and set membership dues at $150/year
>per organization.

As a fully arbitrary figure.  Also, it wasn't called dues, but rather
a registration fee.  Moreover, while it was understood that this money
was going to be an annual fee, it was implied that it barely covered
the expenses of setting up and maintaining the domain from the UUCP
Project perspective.  Having now set up and maintained about 40 domains
myself, I reject this as ludicrous.

>We were
>concerned that some small organizations, such as one-person consulting
>companies, might not be able to afford $150/year, so we set up parks to
>allow an economy of scale at $50/year, or less, for 3rd level domains.

Try again Mark.  I was concerned, bitched to the group, and was
allowed to establish the first park.  You asked me to set the fees,
suggested stronly that it be high enough so that you could get $25 per
subdomain, and let me run with it.  (I do thank you for helping me
out, and allowing me to help debug your software, but that is another
topic.)  I set the dues for this park at $20, and sent the UUCP Project 
$250 to cover our initial registration fee and 10 subdomains.

>We've found that there isn't much interest in parks, people are either
>unwilling to pay anything at all or they don't see any difference
>between $150/year and smaller amounts.  

I know that this is just a personal nit, but you have never encouraged
ANYONE to set up a park.  As far as I know there is only one running
successfully - mine.  There are 40 members (that's $2000 in UUCP
Project Dollars :-).  I am now charging these sites $25 per year for
unlimited long distance and local electronic mail, a domain name,
source archives, automatic pathalias database generation, mail
routing, and several other "services".  Certainly more than the UUCP
Project can say that it provides for its $150.  This is all done via
volunteer labor, and the money goes to (maybe) cover the long distance phone
bills I incur.

I would maintain that there is a lot of interest in parks.  They are
what was intended by the MX system in the first place.  No one wanted
every measley PC running UUPC to get an MX record!  That is an abuse
of the nameservers, and a disservice to the community.  Economy of
scale (to use one of your terms) dictates that parks be encouraged
over singular domains.  The efficiency of having a regional entry and
exit point for communications outweighs the disadvantage of waiting an
additional 10 minutes for your mail.  (If anyone out there is
interested in establishing a regional domain park, please drop me a
line.  I have a 10 page paper describing the entire system, as well as
software to make it all work smoothly.)

>We've had several tiny
>organizations sign up at the $150/year rate for a 2nd level domain.

Only because they didn't know better.  I have talked to some of these
small sites, and they were pretty surprised to find that they
could have done it all themselves, for free.

>We also allow sites that already have their domains through someone
>else, such as CSNET, to join the UUCP Zone for $50/year.

You guys are really too much.  What do you mean, allow?!  You are
providing a service to the community, and part of that service is
keeping the community informed about all the sites which are reachable
via UUCP.  You should be begging these people to tell you about them,
not charging them for absolutely no services whatsoever!  This is
so...  so...  I can't even think of a term.  I am astounded that
anyone could be so pompous as to make this statement.  And I am the
most pompous person I have ever met.

>There are
>also some complementary memberships, for example, ARPANET forwarders
>have the option of joining for free, although some prefer to pay dues
>anyway to show their support.

Here now.  Here is a service!  I knew I could find one!  Allowing
gateway points to be registered in the maps.  Good work, guys.  I hope
that you are pursuing all of these feverishly.

>Our policy for d.* files has always been
>that it consists of UUCP Zone members.  The u.* files were always for
>uucp nodename connections.

BZZZZZZZ!!!  Wrong Mark - would you like to try for Double Jeopardy,
where the prizes can really add up?  The original policy called for
the d. files to contain domains, and the u. files to contain uucp
sites that do not have a registered domain.  It never even occured to
you people that anyone would not want to shell out $150 every year
for somehting that they could achieve themselves.  Parks are yet
another example.  The original letters I have from you (I hope I still
have them) indicate that we (the park) owe the UUCP Project for every
additional line we generate of pathalias output after the first three.
This is insane!  Who are you people to charge us for storage on every
machine in the world?!  Are you reimbursing these people?  Of course
not.  Is the park providing these people with a service by listing all
of the gateway sites within it?  Of course it is.

>Recently, due to public request, we decided
>to allow dotted domain names in u.* files for organizations that have
>not joined the UUCP Zone.  This costs us money, since otherwise some of
>these folks might join the UUCP Zone at the $50 rate, but we judged
>that connectivity and service were more important.

Gosh, what a bunch of great guys you are.  I'm sorry I didn't see it
sooner.  You are going to allow us to list our information in a PUBLIC
DATABASE THAT BELONGS TO THE COMMUNITY?  Who the hell do you people
think you are?  I mean really!  We take a little initiative, try to
improve out connectivity and not bother anyone about it, send our map
update to our regional coordinator, and viola!  We are declared
anathema by the UUCP gods, and sentenced to the purgatory of the u.
files.

>Now I'm seeing a
>backlash we never anticipated: people are telling us that we're evil
>commercial moneygrubbers when we're now offering a free service that
>was never there before!

Give me a break!  Was never there before?  It was always there.  Let's
not quibble over the blatantly obvious - the merely obvious will do
just fine.  True, some have called you evil money grubbers, and even a 
commericial enterprise.  I haven't, but I would have, had I thought of 
it first. :-)

>Our budget is very small, about $12K/year.  We get away with these tiny
>figures by using volunteers.

Let's stress the USING aspect of this.  These volunteers are
maintaining the maps, checking them for accuracy, contacting site
administrators to resolve conflicts, and posting the updated maps to
rutgers for disctibution - themselves - for free!  What are you doing
to help them?  Oh sure, you offer to reimburse them for phone time if
they incur any costs.  Mostly that is their employer's phone time, and
that's free.  The $1.50 in phone bills is not really going to bother
anyone.  I'm not impressed, guys.

>I've never received any salary from the
>UUCP Project, neither has anyone else.  Even so, we're hurting for
>cash.  We recently had the disk die on stargate, our UNIX computer and
>email contact point, and were unable to afford AT&T's rates to fix it.
>The hassles of keeping the project going and the machine
>running through a divorce, 4 involuntary moves, moving phone lines,
>downtime, and so on are not exactly my idea of a vacation in Hawaii.
>Frankly, I wouldn't mind having more time to spend with my children.

Please Mark - I feel for you, and I am sorry that you had such a difficult 
marriage/divorce.  Everyone has troubles, but yours are more severe than 
mine have ever been.  However, I don't see this as a reason to charge 
people money.  That is the subject here, although I would be more than 
happy to discuss the other off line.  Back to that - your box died.
Yeah?  Well, that was your box - your responsibility.  If my domain
park hub died, I wouldn't feel right asking each member for an
additional $35 to help me bring it back up.  This is not proper use of
UUCP Project funds, in my opinion.

>We are NOT a commercial enterprise.  We'd be a
>nonprofit organization if we had the time and money to incorporate.
>We're still working toward that goal.

Yeah, I understand.  That $90 and twenty minutes is such a bitch.

>We were founded because there
>was no other way to get this service.

BZZZZZZ!!!  Blew the Double Jeopardy too!  There has always been a way
to establish this service.  You want to really serve the community?
Tell everyone how to set it up themselves.  Document the steps and
post it.  Provide the OPTION of having people contact you and set up
their domain through you for a nominal, one time fee.  This will be
much better received than your current system.  Have you ever noticed
that you didn't get the 5000 applicants you expected?  Have you seen
the traffic in this group where people say "Why do I have to register
and pay these people so I can run smail?"  You misled people, you 
confused people, and now you are paying for it.  Straighten up and 
take it like a man.

>I still think we're operating on
>a shoestring, and anybody who does it for less will have to get a
>subsidy from somebody, possibly themselves.

Or have to do it right.  More about that later.

>I can't speak for Mel, Tim, or any of the other UUCP Project
>volunteers, but to anyone who feels they can run the UUCP Zone or some
>similar organization for less than our rates, perhaps they should stand
>up and take on the task.

Hmmm...  Maybe some big site out there would be willing to take this
on?  Some site that is not controlled by a major corporation, that
isn't subject to politics?  Some site that is connected to everyone,
or will be eventually?  Someone like... say... uunet?  Rick?

>I am not here because I want money (I'm not
>getting any) or power, or fame.  I'm here to ensure that the community
>can send email to itself.

Well...  I am certainly interested in the communities ability to send
email, but I'm not goint to kid anyone.  I am in this for the fame and
the power.  That is the only reason to do something when you're not
getting paid for it.  Sure, there's altruism, but that is usually
just a front - it looks good on paper, but having practically everyone
in the industry know your name, know that you are wonderful, and feel
like you have done something for them can't be all bad.
--
Shane P. McCarron			ATT:	+1 612 452-9522
Project Manager				UUCP:	ahby@c2s.mn.org