Aittvax.198
net.news
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ittvax!swatt
Tue Jan 19 19:39:55 1982
DECnet survey
Okay, I'll try to keep the flames out, but I do have to mention in
passing that Bill Shannon, Armando Stettner, and other folks at decvax
are doing the rest of us a lot of important favors (and I don't mean
just making USENET maps). DEC is paying their salaries to do work that
makes a lot of UNIX users more comfortable on DEC equipment. Not to
mention that "decvax" is one of the main store and forward nodes on
USENET, or that they poll a lot of systems without autodialers, ...
However, to the point, I suppose it depends on what you call
"marketing". Yes, eventually, if DEC does do something about making
DECnet compatible software available on UNIX, they will probably want
to call it a product and charge money for it.
But I think the survey is a valuable opportunity to give DEC another
push towards full acceptance of UNIX (Sorry Bill, it's sitting in my
active mail box and I mean to get around to it..). I personally am
very interested in a UNIX-VMS network connection; we have two VAXen
sitting 6 feet apart, and it looks like the only way to get mail
between them is by routing through an IBM using 2780 emulation ... Not
a few installations are in the same boat. If enough yeas will get DEC
to do the necessary work, you should be grateful for the opportunity.
Besides, we already have a USENET-ARPA gateway thanks to the kind
folks at UCB and SRI and a few other places; a USENET-DECnet gateway
would enrich both worlds.
Keep in mind that 90+% of USENET users, even in commercial systems like
decvax, are engineering, not marketing types. I am frankly surprised
the DEC marketeers even let Bill send that survey out without first
requiring all USENET subscribers to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Yes ARPA has rules about promotion and such, but I don't see how
similar rules, even if USENET systems agreed to it (how many USENET
users does it take ...), could be enforced on a system that picks up a
substantial part of the overall phone tab. In any case, my policy on
policies is to wait until something becomes a problem, rather than
spend time debating issues that usually become moot. Even then, the
worst I might suggest is to confine it to "net.hype".
So in a legal sense, unless there are violations of phone regulations,
whoever pays the bills on USENET can talk about whatever they want. In
a philosophical sense, I see little difference between surveys to
determine USENET polcies and practices and surveys to determine
interest in possible new DEC software offerings. In fact, the former
is "overhead", only justified insofar as the rest of the traffic is
useful and informative, the latter is clearly both.
- Alan S. Watt (decvax!ittvax!swatt)
[ No, Bill didn't make me do it by threatening to cut off
our UUCP connection, honest!
]
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