UUCP compatibility

[Henry Spencer]

In article <92074 at pyramid.pyramid.com> romain at pyramid.pyramid.com (Romain Kang) writes:
>Do we agree that backward compatibility with UUCP is merely a frill?
>After all, most people will continue to receive it as part of their
>UNIX systems for the foreseeable future.

It depends on the objective, and how widespread VVCP (to give it a name :-))
is supposed to be.  If the objective is easier administration, then people
will not thank you for making them administer *both* UUCP and VVCP, even
if VVCP is pretty easy to deal with.  Easier admin requires something that
can replace UUCP, not just supplement it.  That means either link-level
UUCP compatibility, or a package that is so cheap and so easily available
and has such compelling advantages that everybody will want to switch
and almost nobody will run UUCP any more.  Frankly, the first approach
sounds a whole lot easier to me, especially given the number of sites
that are not in a position to switch to even an appealing package.
(Many sites have no knowledgeable sysadmin, or are constrained by higher
authority to run exactly what the manufacturer ships, or are otherwise
unwilling or unable to convert.  These sites are not VVCP customers,
but VVCP customers will have to be able to talk to them.)
-- 
That's not a joke, that's      |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
NASA.  -Nick Szabo             | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu