henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (11/24/89)
In article <92074@pyramid.pyramid.com> romain@pyramid.pyramid.com (Romain Kang) writes: >Do we agree that backward compatibility with UUCP is merely a frill? >After all, most people will continue to receive it as part of their >UNIX systems for the foreseeable future. It depends on the objective, and how widespread VVCP (to give it a name :-)) is supposed to be. If the objective is easier administration, then people will not thank you for making them administer *both* UUCP and VVCP, even if VVCP is pretty easy to deal with. Easier admin requires something that can replace UUCP, not just supplement it. That means either link-level UUCP compatibility, or a package that is so cheap and so easily available and has such compelling advantages that everybody will want to switch and almost nobody will run UUCP any more. Frankly, the first approach sounds a whole lot easier to me, especially given the number of sites that are not in a position to switch to even an appealing package. (Many sites have no knowledgeable sysadmin, or are constrained by higher authority to run exactly what the manufacturer ships, or are otherwise unwilling or unable to convert. These sites are not VVCP customers, but VVCP customers will have to be able to talk to them.) -- That's not a joke, that's | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology NASA. -Nick Szabo | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu