[net.wanted] uucp on VMS -- A summary

jon@boulder.UUCP (Jon Corbet) (10/02/84)

[Does the line eater live on VMS too?]

Since I posted my question concerning the availability of uucp for VMS
machines, I have received a few informative replies (for which I thank
the helpful people who sent info) and a very large number of "pass on
anything you hear" requests.  So: a summary.  If you want to run uucp
on VMS, it seems that your options are:

	- Run EUNICE.  It comes with uucp.  The problem is that it
	  costs big bucks ($10K minimum).  I have also heard a number
	  of horror stories about bugs in EUNICE, but I have no personal
	  experience in that regard and do not wish to be quoted as
	  saying bad things about EUNICE.
	
	- Microtel Pacific Research has a product they call UVCP.  To
	  talk to them:

			Microtel Pacific Research
			8999 Nelson Way
			Burnaby, British Columbia,
			Canada V5A 4B5
			(604)-294-1471
	
	  The person to talk to is Tim Bray.  He quoted me a price
	  of $1650 (American) if your site does not already have a
	  UNIX license.  I don't know what the price is if you
	  do.
	
	- Wait for DEC to distribute the version written by 
	  Lauren@vortex.  I have no real information about dates or
	  cost -- see Lauren's posting in net.decus about a week ago.
	
	- There is an amazing product known as "phoenix" which attempts
	  to emulate Berkeley 4.1 exactly and run under VMS.  It is
	  apparently quite successful -- they claim to have brought
	  up csh with full job control, which is not trivial under
	  VMS...
	
	- A couple of people suggested that I check the LBLTOOLS package
	  distributed on the decus tapes.  I did, and this package (which
	  is now called SWTOOLS since somebody other than Lawrence
	  Livermore got in on the act (Hughes, I think).  There is no
	  uucp in this package.  Sigh.
	
	- It seems that I work for one of those organizations where
	  several thousand dollars worth of my time appears cheaper
	  than $1650 for software.  Thus, it seems that I may well
	  write a version of my own -- uucp seems fairly simple,
	  after all; any UNIX hacker should be able to whip it off
	  in a few weeks, right?  If I do write my own version, it
	  will be by definition public domain software, and I will
	  distribute over the net, and probably on the decus tapes
	  as well.  I will keep you posted....
	
	- There is one other site that has a port of the original
	  uucp.  I need to verify with them that it is OK to post
	  their names -- they may not want to deal with the deluge
	  of mail.  They need to see a UNIX license anyway, which
	  is probably not too helpful to most VMS sites.  Especially
	  for us, since it seems that NCAR, which is wholly owned
	  by UCAR (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research)
	  which is a consortium of American universities that have
	  meterology departments, is not eligible for the educational
	  discount.  Maybe I will put further comments on this
	  in net.flame...

If I receive any other relevant information, I will post it here.

-- 
Jonathan Corbet
National Center for Atmospheric Research
{seismo|hplabs}!hao!cires!boulder!jon