don@allegra.UUCP (Don Mitchell) (10/03/85)
No one has dared to find out what allegra's phone bill is here. Most estimates are in the area of 100K or so per year. In addition to the phone bills, there is the cost of maintaining a VAX 11/750 that is totally dedicated to handing the mail traffic. A dedicated CPU became necessary when we switched to the new Berkeley mailer (sendmail) which is stunningly inefficient. There has been some debate here about switching to a better mailer, such as the one used in UNIX V8. There is no interest here at all in supporting domains. With the exception of Grapevine, I don't believe there has ever been a major electronic mail system designed by people who were experts in communication protocols and networking. It is a pity that our community has been served so poorly. All sorts of interesting things grew up around Grapevine, because it was so simple and general. However, as Linderman said, we want to see the USENET survive and function. Despite the randomness of its design, it ties together an interesting community of people.