gds@mit-eddie.UUCP (Greg Skinner) (02/09/86)
I read the Eric Allman interview of Peter Honeyman in Unix Review last
month and, despite the fact that I am a domainist (because I think it is
too complex a task to successfully manage a 10,000-node namespace, I was
impressed by Honeyman's comments regarding the future of UUCP as a
network and his position on the domain system and routing issues.
I was particularly impressed when they got around to discussing
sendmail. Honeyman's comments ("Opening the envelope! That's illegal!"
and "People like to do complex things with mail") really hit home.
No offense to Eric Allman, but a lot of the functions performed by
sendmail could probably be performed a lot more simply. Yet in still
sendmail (plus recent mods for context searches) does the job better
than any other software I've seen to date.
It looks as if the domainists are going to win, because I hear that most
UUCP sites are going to register as part of the Internet domain system
(.org, .edu, etc.). However, I think a lot of us will fall back on our
pathalias-provided paths when the nameservers don't function (and
considering the recent ihnp4 problems, this is a distinct possibility).
UUCP and pathalias/pathparse will still be around for a long time.
(note: quotes are paraphrased)
--
It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under.
Greg Skinner (gregbo)
{decvax!genrad, allegra, gatech, ihnp4}!mit-eddie!gds
gds@eddie.mit.edu