roskos@csed-1.IDA.ORG (Eric Roskos) (05/17/88)
Rick Adams (speaking from Seismo) writes: >Well, "this net" was started EXPLICITLY for Unix boxes. It remained >EXCLUSIVELY for Unix boxes for the first 5 (more or less) years >of its existance. A few years ago, the "pcs" started encroaching on it. > >One should also keep in mind that the Unix boxes (don't you love >anthropomorphism?) are paying the vast majority of the cost of the network. >Currently they tolerate the pc binaries, but many of them are >clearly not happy about it. It seems that at least two separate things are being confused here. (Not that this is unusual. :-)) Many of these Unix sites (certainly all the ones I have worked at) have both PCs and Unix systems. It seems it is an overgeneralization to claim that "many of them are clearly not happy about it". Maybe most of them have been avoiding commenting on it. But now you have cast a weighty "nearly-backbone" opinion into it, I am afraid... promoting more commentary and debate. (What is the alternative? Not to say anything and have it be concluded that everyone agrees?) Frankly, it seems pointless to argue whether PICNIX is inspired by "greed" -- certainly many other Usenet-related projects profit enormously more by the net, they just seem to do it with more marketing polish -- and, unlike a lot of postings (whether they are discussion or code), it actually is a very useful set of utilities: utilities that provide Unix*-like commands for MS-DOS (for those who don't know what PICNIX is). It seems that one can sell quite costly products on the Usenet if one claims that one is doing it as a "public service," [I am thinking of some products from a few years ago, it doesn't matter which, since you can probably find other examples], but if someone is more honest and says "here are some useful utilities, you can send a donation if you want," people get upset. But only if it happens not to be useful to them. These arguments seem to start up regularly, when someone has a personal vendetta against some newsgroup (or some person or site), and waste much more net time (and even more personnel time) than what they are complaining about. You'd think that by now people would have gotten tired of arguing about the same things all the time. ----- *Unix is a trademark of AT&T.