Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!PUCC!MAINTCMS From: MAINTCMS@PUCC.BITNET (John Wagner) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.policy-l Subject: Re: User interface for list postings Message-ID: Date: 5 Feb 90 21:43:16 GMT Sender: Discussion about BITNET policies Reply-To: Discussion about BITNET policies Lines: 45 Approved: NETNEWS@PSUVM Gateway In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 5 Feb 90 09:18:06 EST from On Mon, 5 Feb 90 09:18:06 EST Michael Johnson said: >>I certainly don't think that software that can't be used by *all* >>Bitnet sites should be funded out of general Bitnet membership fees. >>If some sites want to pay Bitnic to develop software that would be >>licensed to those sites paying for it, fine. But why should, say, an >>MVS-only site pay for development of VM tools, or a VM-only site pay >>for development of VMS tools, etc??? >The point is that all sites should be REQUIRED to run up-to-date copies of >certain software so that we have some consistency on the network. Let's not >get into operating system politics here. The same tools would be developed >for all systems hooked into the net and would be run by all systems and should >therefore be paid for by the net as a whole. The current system certainly is >NOT fair. A very few sites are shouldering the development and maintenance >burden for the entire net. And you would like them to continue doing so while >you get free software. How convenient. Michael, Let the sites who are doing the software make the claim that it is unfair. I don't think you will find them doing so. Princeton has received improvements to MAILER that I could not have produced as quickly but that benefitted Princeton (earlier than the rest of the MAILER sites). The debugging support (by other sites) has made MAILER a better piece of code. This has not been a one way street. Development of MAILER and MAIL/MAILBOOK (supported by Richard Schafer at Rice) have both been cooperative efforts of the users of the software with a site willing to provide a development center. My personnal feeling is that the whole topic of portable (system independent) code has been used as a smoke screen by some parts of the network to not create similar environments for their platforms. I believe that suggesting that software should be developed by BITNIC amounts to the same thing. Why didn't a similar environment develop for the UREP/JNET machines (to pick 1 group)? Where were the sites willing to develop software (at their own expense) to be compatible with the systems already on BITNET? Why did no support groups develop for those development projects that did occur? (If they existed, they sure were awful quiet.) What was different about the VM systems from the rest of the network? If you can answer these questions I think you will be a lot further along the route of being able to decide what would be a good approach for software development on BITNET. I know I don't have any answers to them. Does anyone?