Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!ima!minya!jc
From: jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: registering UUCP sites
Message-ID: <124@minya.UUCP>
Date: 13 Nov 88 19:20:57 GMT
References: <1165@fig.bbn.com>
Organization: (none)
Lines: 40

In article <1165@fig.bbn.com>, rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes:
> >You'll *never* get *all* UUCP sites registered.  Face the fact, don't just
> >stand there and tell us that it's the solution to all our problems.
> 
> Fair enough.
> 
> Just don't complain when domain-only sites start turning up
> and they refuse to send mail to you.

Time once again to point out that uucp is not an email package;
it is a file-transfer package, with email layered on top of it.

This isn't a facetious bit of pickiness.  It is quite common to
make transient uucp hookups (often via a null-modem cable) for
the purpose of transferring a few Mbytes of files into a machine,
and then unplug them and carry one of them off somewhere.  If
doing this required registering with some bureaucracy somewhere,
it would change a few-minutes job to a few-weeks job.

The fact that email comes along with such a transient uucp link
is not of much interest to the people who set it up (other than
the fact that "mail old!new!root" is a quick test of bidirectional
connectivity if you have just linked "new" to "old").

It's also common for a set of machines in a lab to have ad-hoc
uucp links (again, usually via null modem cables) that last for
days, weeks, or months.  The users usually don't know or care
that there is a big world of email outside.  So what if some
turkey on one of the machines makes an outside link?  Why should
the users of the other machines be expected to register with 
the bureaucracy, when they never asked to be part of the email
system?  Why should their internal use of uucp for file transfer
obligate them to fill out papers for some outside email authority 
that they've often never even heard of?

-- 
John Chambers <{adelie,ima,maynard,mit-eddie}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393)

[Any errors in the above are due to failures in the logic of the keyboard,
not in the fingers that did the typing.]