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