USENIX Board Studies UUCP
Henry Spencer
henry at utzoo.uucp
Fri Nov 17 05:21:04 AEST 1989
In article <1624 at crdos1.crd.ge.COM> davidsen at crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>| o How do we distribute the final product? On what terms?
>
> If this is to be a success I think giving it away is the only
>reasonable choice. If it is truely better vendors and standards groups
>will adopt it, but having it free would prevent the situation with
>current uucp, in which there are a large number of reimplementations
>from various sources, with various levels of compatibility and
>reliability.
An even more pointed example is the ACSNet software. It is approximately
the equivalent of UUCP, plus a number of extras. In many ways it looks
better than UUCP. But outside of Australia, where its ubiquitous presence
makes it essentially a necessity if you want to communicate, it's never
caught on. In my opinion, a major reason for that is that it costs money.
Not a lot... but enough to make it uncompetitive with UUCP.
If you really want a UUCP replacement to catch on, it has to be something
that *everyone*, even the folks with nervous lawyers or absolutely no money,
can run, and that vendors can distribute without extra paperwork or cost.
--
A bit of tolerance is worth a | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
megabyte of flaming. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu
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