Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!n8emr!lwv
From: lwv@n8emr.UUCP (Larry W. Virden)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Adding commercial access to Usenet
Message-ID: <796@n8emr.UUCP>
Date: 7 Feb 89 20:26:00 GMT
Reply-To: lwv@n8emr.UUCP (Larry W. Virden)
Organization: Ham BBS, 614-457-4227 (1200/2400/19.2 telebit,8N1)
Lines: 38

I am wondering what the net's thoughts are on the future (possibly not too
far) addition of commercially based article distribution services such
as Compuserve, BIX, etc. to the USENET community.

For instance, currently there are gateways for Fidonet and ProLine systems
to receive and post articles both on their local systems and the articles
flow back onto the net or from the net into their private distribution
networks.  There may in fact be other such networks gatewayed at this time.

The other day I believe that I saw a posting from a system manager type from
BIX asking a unix-y question.  I think that I remember his site name as being
bix.  And I know of one or two folks who are working very hard to be able
to get articles fromCIS into a /usr/spool/cis/forum type format and replys
back to CIS, so once that is in place I can easily see where one would find
other groups flowing in both directions.

I am not promoting a positive or negative reaction here - just curious to
see what those who are running and using the net think of this.  Is this
environment, which in the past has been very particular about  commercial
announcements, etc. going to 'permit' the addition of such groups?  I
certainly remember the ruckus as stargate made announcements about restrictions
on data flowing thru their service; I think that I would be overly optimistic
to believe that such issues wouldnt come up when commercial services start
using existing data and contributing.

Finally, we must remember that usenet is more than internet, bitnet, etc. that
there are folks out here using uucp and modems and thus are not restricted by
previously signed contracts NOT to perform such a gateway service; thus, it
should not be considered certain that anything CAN be done about it.

I am just hoping to change the subject around here just a little bit ;-)


-- 
Larry W. Virden	 674 Falls Place, Reynoldsburg, OH 43068 (614) 864-8817
75046,606 (CIS) ; LVirden (ALPE) ; osu-cis!n8emr!lwv (UUCP) 
osu-cis!n8emr!lwv@TUT.CIS.OHIO-STATE.EDU (INTERNET)
The world's not inherited from our parents, but borrowed from our children.