taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (03/25/87)
[a previous copy of this posting may have escaped my machine before being killed. If so, please ignore it and read/reply to this one instead.] ******************************************************************************** ** This is a verbatim copy of a message I have sent to the USENIX Association ** ** board of directors and the editor of the USENIX Association Journal ** ** ";login:". I think it is a matter that deserves considerable attention ** ** from the members of the USENET and Unix Community. ** ******************************************************************************** An insidious thing is happening to the Unix community while we sit and watch - it's being changed from a fun, exemplary, free and democratic system to a system that is ruled by a few that wield power for reasons of personal gain and ego. While they present themselves as having the best interests of the community at heart, I strongly believe that this isn't the case. For example, the recent announcement of the charge to register a host with the "UUCP Mapping Project" was extremely disturbing - it is a transition from a totally free system (e.g. the pathalias solution) to a system that *costs quite a bit of money*. The purported reason was for administration and overhead costs. I don't accept that. Furthermore, I see no reason why we couldn't have developed a solution that allows the power and freedom of the domain naming scheme, with routing by a given domain to a specific 'server' machine, and then posted it to Usenet and made it available via the Usenix Distribution Tape and other means. Similarly, the original idea of Stargate was to provide sites with an alternative to expensive phone bills by using a one-way satellite link/ cable link. Instead, what has arisen from the work is a system that will involve thousands of dollars per site to sign up and become operational on. Is this meeting the goals? The decoder box story is a good example - the original intention was for the Stargate group to find a few good hardware hackers to design a box that would be really cheap to produce and ship them out to hardware-intensive Usenet sites *with schematics* in the hope that they could be designed even cheaper and faster. Instead what has happened is that it has become 'proprietary' and we are expected to foot the exorbitant bill for a Stargate feed, without any promise of a reduction in cost in the future. This is quite disturbing, to say the least. Sufficiently so that I seriously question whether it is appropriate for the Usenix Association to continue working with the group, let alone fund them. Similarly, it is quite disturbing that the UUCP Mapping Project, as mentioned above, has taken the route of organizing a 'non-profit corporation' and expecting quite a bit of money from people. This is *not* at all in the best interests of the membership. In fact, there are already existing solutions that could handle the new domain naming scheme that are *in the public domain* or at least sufficiently accessable that we could all have them up and running within two months of a change being announced. And having it all public would ensure that it would be improved on, and I think we all agree that dynamic software, hardware, and in general, technology is infinitely better than a static, carved-in-stone solution, however excellent it may appear at that point in time. I think a special meeting of the USENIX Association is in order, with a questionnaire sent out to the members of the organization explaining what has happened, what is currently happening, the road that this leads us down, alternative solutions and so on. The bottom line is to have the membership decide whether our current direction is appropriate or not. And I, obviously, feel *very* strongly that it is not. Further examples of the perversion of the Unix community can be easily gleaned from a monitoring of the last few years of the Usenet community. Five years or so ago when I started reading Usenet, it was a free-wheeling teleconferencing system, quite fun, quite strange, and generally, a good way to spend a small bit of my time. In the past few years, however, a so-called Backbone Cabal has arisen that has more-or-less taken over the network and imposed their own ideas and beliefs upon it. A few months ago this same cabal decided that it would be useful to rename all the newsgroups. The purported reasons were that it would be an improvement in; 1. the logical organization of the net, and 2. easier to administer. I don't believe that either goal has been achieved. Renaming the groups is not an appropriate solution to the first goal, for example, because the solution need be at the level of implementing something that allows people to browse groups by "keyword" or "topic" (and remove the whole concept of newsgroups except as an administrative and transmission aid). Secondly, the renaming the groups isn't a good way to help the administration of the netnews systems either - Better administration tools are really what is needed in this case. But the names were changed. And hundreds upon hundreds of system administrators went through all sorts of grief dealing with it. And thousands of users went through grief trying to figure out what happened to their old newsgroups. To what purpose? I really feel that the actual purpose was for the cabal to stretch their muscles a little bit - to see if they really could change the entire USENET. And they did. Frightening. USENIX is supporting this, too, with the funding of groups like the Stargate project and the UUCP Mapping Project knowing that the final result will be power in the hands of a few. A more recent example of the work of this group is the final phase of the newsgroup renaming plan. The last step is for all the moderated groups to be renamed from "mod.<something>" to a specific name that doesn't include any indication that the group is moderated (a bad idea for many reasons, but, again, shrugged off by the main players in this game). As it turns out, the previous version of the netnews software doesn't handle moderated groups that aren't prefixed with the "mod." name. So the solution is to *force* all the administrators to change their systems. Totally regardless of whether they are actually willing and able to do it. Irrelevant of the fact that a lot of sites have administrators that don't even want to touch the netnews software, let alone go through the pain of updating to a new, incompatible, version. If they don't change, tough luck. Let 'em die. This is the kind of people that USENIX is funding to the tune of many thousands of dollars a year. (this is not to say that everyone associated with Stargate and the UUCP Mapping Project is like this, but I do believe that there are certain members that are influencing the projects adversely). An important question at this point is ``why is this happening? If the Unix community is indeed a democracy, why are people letting this transition take place?''. I feel that the major answers to this are that first off people just don't realize the dangers of power (or are so used to having arbitrary order imposed on them that they don't realize that USENET could be an anarchy) and secondly the cabal and related projects are getting explicit support and 'respectability' from the USENIX Assocation. For example, when I first heard of the Stargate project, I thought that it was an excellent idea. Then I heard about the 'changes' in the project as it evolved and started to question. But it was an officially funded project of the USENIX Association, of which I was and am still a member. So what can I do? Obviously greater minds than my own had ascertained that this was the appropriate direction to move in. It isn't, and I'm announcing my views here in this letter. I only hope that the board is receptive to this, and has the ability to state that the projects are indeed out of hand and that not only is the funding being withdrawn but any official or unofficial sanction and support of the projects and the cabal is withdrawn too. The crux, here, is that there is no reason why we can't have either free or minimal cost systems to allow a further upgrade path for Unix, UUCP, USENET, and so on. If there is interest I can outline solutions to both the UUCP Mapping Project goals and the Stargate project that would involved *zero* cost to the end user or an absolute minimal cost (for example I'm getting a newswire feed for HP Labs in the near future - UPI, AP, TASS, and about a dozen more services, at 9600 baud, 24 hours a day - for a cost of $20/site. I am further going to lease a satellite dish for $120/month, installation included. So why does Stargate expect us to pay so much? You can bet that the cost of newswire feeds is considerably more than USENET (AP alone is upwards of $650 a month for a direct feed)). Rather than bogging this down with technical details that are not appropriate, I'm going to talk more about the ramifications of USENIX supporting this sort of work for a bit... As an organization, USENIX has always been seen as a casual, fun, yet technically advanced users group. The publications have had a light touch, with humour and such, and the conferences always have good parties and all. An excellent organization overall. But the evil spectre of change looms and it seems that USENIX is so interested in becoming a "legitimate group" that we have lost our perspective on the original community that we're spawned from. So instead of spending the associations money on setting up, for example, a set of small hosts on either coast with a T1 dedicated line between them specifically for mail between the coasts (or something of that nature) they fund projects that moves Unix out of the anarchy and free software phase and into the EDP/pay-for-services phase of a system. It's something that may be inevitable, but NOT YET! We *can* solve these things without resorting to the changes we're funding currently. Moves like the spinoff of a new magazine for the association, a glossy with high-quality technical publications, is excellent *because it will be part of the membership fees*. IF it were to become a separate publication with a separate subscription price, however cheap, it would be a bad thing. And again, to pound on the same points again, the very fact that Stargate and, more especially, the UUCP Mapping Project require user funds is BAD. We must keep in mind that the very foundation of the Unix community is anarchy. No rules and no rulers. And there is no reason that we need change. This letter has become somewhat of a tirade against both the projects that the USENIX Association are funding and the explicit and implicit support of a power-hungry group of people active on the net. I apologize for the length of this message, but it really is vital that we discuss this openly. As a specific suggestion, I'd like to propose that this letter, along with a comment from each board member and the members of the USENIX projects be included in the next issue of ";login:". Also included should be a request for feedback from the members of the Association - this is sufficiently crucial that the entire organization could pivot on the ultimate outcome of this discussion and resulting decisions. To aid in this, I've also sent a copy of this message to Kevin Baranski- Walker, the new editor of ";login:". -- Dave Taylor taylor@hplabs.HP.COM
phil@amd.UUCP (03/26/87)
In article <1486@hplabsc.UUCP> taylor@hplabs.HP.COM (Dave Taylor) writes: > >As it turns out, the previous version of the netnews >software doesn't handle moderated groups that aren't prefixed with >the "mod." name. So the solution is to *force* all the administrators >to change their systems. > >Totally regardless of whether they are actually willing and able to >do it. Irrelevant of the fact that a lot of sites have administrators >that don't even want to touch the netnews software, let alone go through >the pain of updating to a new, incompatible, version. If they don't >change, tough luck. Let 'em die. Sites which run old code inflict their bugs on the rest of the network. I think it's a good thing to force people to periodically install new software. >But the evil spectre of change looms and it seems that USENIX is >so interested in becoming a "legitimate group" that we have lost >our perspective on the original community that we're spawned from. >So instead of spending the associations money on setting up, for example, >a set of small hosts on either coast with a T1 dedicated line between >them specifically for mail between the coasts (or something of that The last time I looked, a T1 from coast to coast (say 3000 miles) ran about $90,000 in line charges alone per month, or over 1 MILLION dollars a year. This is not including installation, modems, controllers, hosts, staff to run it, test equipment, etc. My company has one T1 line and we are getting some more, as well as several 56Kbaud lines between California and Texas, so I do know something about this subject. Is this really an appropriate thing for USENIX to do? -- This is only my opinion and an unofficial one at that. Phil Ngai (408) 749-5720 UUCP: {decwrl,ihnp4,allegra}!amdcad!phil ARPA: amdcad!phil@decwrl.ARPA
john@xanth.UUCP (03/26/87)
In article <1486@hplabsc.UUCP>, taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) writes: > [a previous copy of this posting may have escaped my machine before being > killed. If so, please ignore it and read/reply to this one instead.] And from a couple of followups I've seen, it was a hot one indeed! Anyway, while this doesn't answer all of your objections by any means, I really feel like I need to reply to this: > For example, the recent announcement of the charge to register a host > with the "UUCP Mapping Project" was extremely disturbing - it is a > transition from a totally free system (e.g. the pathalias solution) > to a system that *costs quite a bit of money*. The purported reason > was for administration and overhead costs. > > I don't accept that. Furthermore, I see no reason why we couldn't > have developed a solution that allows the power and freedom of > the domain naming scheme, with routing by a given domain to a specific > 'server' machine, and then posted it to Usenet and made it available > via the Usenix Distribution Tape and other means. Well, Dave [in the voice of the HAL 9000], the software to do this *is* free, publicly available, and was posted to Usenet in mod.sources. It is called smail, and was written by the same people that you are criticizing. And it is still "the pathalias solution", made more flexible. And nobody's forcing any transition - you can still use the same uucp routing mechanisms you always have. Mel Pleasant's even taking special pains to make sure that places that have moved their map entries to the domain parts of the map are still recognizable and reachable via their old uucp names. And I'm sure that Rick Adams would be glad to send you the gatewaying software mentioned in the UUCP Project's domain registration information packet (and maybe the smail documentation - they overlap by about 99%, I think), if you have an ARPANET site willing to forward for you. But *you* go ahead and try to contact HOSTMASTER@SRI-NIC.ARPA (@NIC.SRI.COM?) to register your new UUCP only domain, and *you* explain that the reason you're not going through the channels worked out between the UUCP Project and the NIC to register your domain is because you are trying to avoid the $150/year. Yes, you might get away with it, but will the next 200 applications? "Get real." But, of course, you don't need to worry about this yourself, since your domain is HP.COM, and HP.COM is already registered, either by virtue of being directly on the DDN or through CSNET (I don't know which). Similarly, we are ODU.EDU, registered via CSNET. And neither we nor you need to pay a dime to the UUCP Project to - run smail on our machines, thereby making us Class 3 UUCP hosts (recognizing rmail do.ma.in!user) - list our uucp hosts in the UUCP map <always has, and always - list a domain entry in the UUCP map <will be *FREE* - and thereby have full domain support, as well as still being host.UUCP Of course, the reason that we don't need to pay the $150/year for the name ODU.EDU is because we're paying $3000/year (or so) for CSNET membership! And others don't have to pay the $150/year because the DoD loves them. All in all, $150/year seems like pretty a good deal for an Internet domain name, compared to joining CSNET or becoming a major defense contractor! And, as has been said several times, everything that has always been free *still is*. All in all, I feel like my life in this electronic world that we've created has been made tremendously better by the work of the UUCP Project, and the same for my users. It's been well worth our USENIX dues, in my opinion, and we wouldn't even have to have been members of USENIX to reap the benefits. [And I think the new newsgroup names are much more esthetic too - so there! :-} ] Objections are welcome.... -- John Owens Old Dominion University - Norfolk, Virginia, USA john@ODU.EDU old arpa: john%odu.edu@RELAY.CS.NET +1 804 440 3915 old uucp: {seismo,harvard,sun,hoptoad}!xanth!john
gemini@homxb.UUCP (03/26/87)
Dave, you hit the nail right on the head with your letter to USENIX. UUCP Zone and Stargate smack of profiteering at the expense of Usenet to me. It makes no difference that they are run under the guise of Not-For-Profit. Rick Richardson, PC Research, Inc: (201) 922-1134 ..!ihnp4!castor!pcrat!rick when at AT&T-CPL: (201) 834-1378 ..!ihnp4!castor!pollux!rer (c)Copyr 1987 Rick Richardson; you can redistribute only if your recipients can.
faigin@sdcrdcf.UUCP (03/26/87)
I think the following quote is applicable to Dave's letter:
"Only by Violent Revolution can the established order be preserved."
Daniel
--
Work : UNiSYS/DS/System Development Group| Email: faigin@sdcrdcf.UUCP
2525 Colorado MD 91-01 | sdcrdcf!faigin@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
Santa Monica CA 90406 | Home : 8333 Columbus Avenue #17
(213) 829-7511 x6393 | Sepulveda CA 91343geoff@desint.UUCP (03/27/87)
In article <1486@hplabsc.UUCP> taylor@hplabs.HP.COM (Dave Taylor) writes in incredibly long tirade of old rehashes. What a crock. I hate to break it to you, Dave, but neither uucp nor usenet is free, nor have they ever been. It *is* true that some of us (e.g., me) don't pay a cent for these services, because people like TRW are willing to pay my share of the load as a favor to me. I try to return the favor by using my hookup responsibly, and by being a generally good person on the net. But I never, never, NEVER forget that somebody else is paying the bills. Now you are getting all upset because some of these sites are getting tired of the costs, and are taking some actions to help control costs, spread them out a bit more, and make it possible for net.idiocy to be limited to those sites who find it worth the cost. In response, you scream about how people are taking away your "rights", and in general are mouthing off with a lot of allegations that are totally unsupported by the facts. Here's a fact for you: you can register for a uucp domain name for $50 a year. Here's another fact: you can't connect to usenet without a modem that costs at least $150, and a phone line that costs you at least $8 per month (true, you can share the line, but on a time basis Usenet clearly should be allocated most of the costs). In light of those costs, and the cost of the computer you need to read news, I don't think it's really very reasonable to complain about a fee for registering in a database. BTW, I fully expect that there will come a day when TRW asks me to start paying my own share of communications costs. When that day comes, I will naturally be unhappy, but you can bet your sweet bippy that I won't be crybabying about some cabal's conspiracy to defraud me. > Similarly, the original idea of Stargate was... > ...Instead, what has arisen from the work is a system that > will involve thousands of dollars per site... Is this meeting the goals? This falls into the "stupid question" category. If, as you claim, you have been reading the net for five years, you should know by now that the large sites are paying tens of thousands of dollars in phone bills. A mere $5k to cut that back is a bargain. The proof is in the pudding: Brian Reid, for example, is obviously eager to get his satellite dish going. HE doesn't wonder whether it's cost-effective; he KNOWS. > Similarly, it is quite disturbing that the UUCP Mapping Project... > [is] expecting quite a bit of money from people. This is > *not* at all in the best interests of the membership. The hell it's not. What you miss is that some of us use this network for business that matters to us monetarily. I am perfectly willing to pay $1000/yr (hear that, Mark? that's not a typo; a thousand dollars is CHEAP) if it will give me reliable electronic mail. If you're too cheap to pay for reliability, I suggest you stick to the current scheme -- it'll have to hang around for years to handle obsolete sites and recalcitrant fools. > I think a special meeting of the USENIX Association is in order, Give me a break. You purport to be worried about money. Do you have any idea at all what that would cost? Or is HP planning on paying everybody's airfare and hotel bills? Not to mention the time we could have spent on productive, paying work. > Further examples of the perversion of the Unix community... > Five years or so ago when I started reading Usenet, it was > a free-wheeling teleconferencing system, quite fun, quite strange, and > generally, a good way to spend a small bit of my time. Funny, I started about five years ago, too, and I think it's still freewheeling, fun, and strange. Bigger, too. I used to get news at 300 baud, now it's 2400 and my transfers take longer than they did at 300. Funny how combinatorial explosion generates bigger numbers. > In the past > few years, however, a so-called Backbone Cabal has arisen that has > more-or-less taken over the network and imposed their own ideas and > beliefs upon it. Wrong again. It was by vote. Just like Irwin Feerst, the fact that you lost the election does *not* mean that the winners are some sort of evil conspiracy. And frankly, Dave, I'm a little peeved at this pejorative terminology. You have used "perversion," "conspiracy," and "cabal". Even if your general opinions were true, it is entirely incorrect and GROSSLY unfair to attribute evil motives to the people involved. I expect this sort of thing from net newcomers, but from someone of your stature it's a bit disappointing to see namecalling and unsupported accusations. I think you owe some people a public apology. > I really feel that the actual purpose was for the cabal to stretch > their muscles a little bit - to see if they really could change the > entire USENET. And they did. Frightening. Give me a BREAK. Have you been reading LaRouche literature or something? [with respect to "forcing" (Dave's words) out-of-date sites to update:] > Totally regardless of whether they are actually willing and able to > do it...If they don't change, tough luck. Let 'em die. You got it, friend. Some (most) of us would like to move forward, and we are going to do so. There are around 10,000 (!) sites on the net; about 100 of them are running software that is grossly out of date. The other 9,900 sites are going to update to new software. People like Rick Adams have put in a lot of work making it possible for those other 100 sites to upgrade, and now they are putting in a lot of work to give them warnings so that they would know it's time to update. Should we really hold back the 9900 because the 100 are out-of-date, and possibly don't even have a news reader on them any more? And your response to this is to complain about minorities forcing their will on a majority? Give me a *BREAK*! > This is the kind of people that USENIX is funding to the tune of many > thousands of dollars a year. Wow! Many thousands! Perhaps even as much as TENS of thousands in a whole year, being split among only a few people! (How much is your annual salary? Do you know what your departmental budget is?) > An important question at this point is ``why is this happening? If > the Unix community is indeed a democracy, why are people letting this > transition take place?''. Because we voted for it. > The crux, here, is that there is no reason why we can't have either > free or minimal cost systems...If there is interest I can outline solutions > ...that would involved *zero* cost to the end user... I'm waiting with bated breath. Am I going to steal my phone services from GTE (I confess it *would* be satisfying to get back at that company :-)? Or maybe you're going to give me a free satellite dish? My perception is that every single person working on either Stargate or the UUCP project would be OVERJOYED to have you volunteer you help. However, I suspect most would appreciate it if you took the time to investigate all the aspects of the situation before offering an unschooled opinion. In other words, put up or shut up. > Moves like the spinoff of a new magazine for the association, a glossy > with high-quality technical publications, is excellent *because it > will be part of the membership fees*. IF it were to become a separate > publication with a separate subscription price, however cheap, it would > be a bad thing. You are saying that all unbundling is inherently bad. What a crock. Do you think ACM and IEEE should raise their membership fees to $2000 each so they can mail you every publication they put out, regardless of relevance? > And again, to pound on the same points again, Indeed, your posting was both repetitious and excessive. You should have edited it with a chain saw. > We must keep in mind that the very foundation of the Unix community > is anarchy. No rules and no rulers. And there is no reason that we > need change. Double crock. While it is true that the UNIX community is anarchistic, it is not at all clear that anarchy is its foundation. And I can see lots of reason why we should change. Anarchy is a great way to run a small society (whether company, USENET, or whatever) but breaks down rather badly in large groups. (People who want to argue that point should move their discussion to mod.philosophy or some other talk-oriented group). > support of a power-hungry group of people active on the net. The only people who are power-hungry are those who are screaming that the wishes of the majority of the net are a conspiracy. They desperately want to force their own narrow view of the world on the rest of us, even after we have overwhelmingly voted in favor of moving into the future. > I apologize > for the length of this message, but it really is vital that we discuss > this openly. No it's not vital. This issue has been beaten to death endlessly, and I for one am tired of having to waste good disk space on such noise. -- Geoff Kuenning {hplabs,ihnp4}!trwrb!desint!geoff
steve@umnd-cs.UUCP (03/27/87)
If this is so disturbing why are you just flaming about this now?
Seems to me that it's been well over 6 months since the announcement
that this 'value-added' service would cost money.
In your letter you imply that there is a better solution, but don't
discuss any alternatives other than a few brief blurbs about
regional server machines. Couldn't you think of any or were you
just venting steam?
I haven't seen many real flames about the 'Map Project', and since
a lot people on the net seem to flame at the slightest provacation
I have a hard time believing that your opinions are the majority
opinion.
But hey, this net is an anarchy, so go off and find your own way to
fix the problems and implement them. Noone is going to stop you.
If you can find enough sites with enough money who are willing to
spend a lot of time to change things - go for it. Of course, you're
the one who doesn't have enough time to install news version 2.11, so
good luck!!!!
-steve
--
Spoken: Steven M. Miller UUCP: umnd-cs!steve CSNET: steve@umn-duluth.csnet
ARPA: steve@cs-gw.d.umn.edu
USNail: Computer Science Dept, University of Minnesota at Duluth
10 University Drive, Duluth, MN 55812authorplaceholder@gorgo.UUCP.UUCP (03/28/87)
Folks lets save us all some money and not honor this with further diatribe. Steve Blasingame (Oklahoma City) bsteve@gorgo.att.com
eldon@hpubvwa.UUCP (03/29/87)
> > I apologize > > for the length of this message, but it really is vital that we discuss > > this openly. > > No it's not vital. This issue has been beaten to death endlessly, and I > for one am tired of having to waste good disk space on such noise. > -- > > Geoff Kuenning > {hplabs,ihnp4}!trwrb!desint!geoff > ---------- . . . . . and that is one persons opinion. But, I still agree with Dave! Eldon Brown hpubvwa!eldon
glee@cognos.UUCP (Godfrey Lee) (03/29/87)
I agree with Taylor's suggestion that USENIX should have a special meeting for discussing the whole direction of usenet. To allow maximum participation from the members, it should be held as part of the summer conference this year. I am relatively new to the net, so I won't say too much on the subject(s). However, I feel that if we attempt to put too much control over the network, and if we require explicit financial commitment from the users that exceed a few dollars, and too much time from the system administors (I am the sysadmin here), the whole network is in danger of dying a quick death. Our connection to the usenet is a bootleg project at my company, with me putting in my own time to administer it, because I believe in it, and believe in its value to my company (Don't ask me to justify it to my management, it isn't worth the effort). My only news feed is in the same city, and his only newsfeed is in Toronto, whose only news feed is utzoo. And I feed two other sites!! As you can see, any shakeup of the usenet community resulting in desertion of a small percentage of the sites could cause major segments of the net to loose their connections. PLEASE BE VERY AWARE OF THIS, AND TAKE THIS INTO CONSIDERATION WHEN YOU CONTEMPLATE CHANGES. WE ARE AT YOUR MERCY! -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Godfrey Lee, Cognos Incorporated, 3755 Riverside Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA K1G 3N3 (613) 738-1440 decvax!utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!cognos!glee
mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (03/31/87)
In article <1486@hplabsc.UUCP>, taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) writes: [ much about how USEnet is being killed by the backbone "cabal", full of semantic bludgeons about "personal gain", "ego", "exorbitant", "evil spectre", etc. ] > I really feel that the actual purpose was for the cabal to stretch > their muscles a little bit - to see if they really could change the > entire USENET. And they did. Frightening. Of course they did. They're paying for it, in large part. Remember that if, say, seismo (or gatech, or decvax, or whoever) gets too draconian, to the point where their feeds really feel the net would be better off without them, then they can be cut off. The same is true of the backbone in general, but would require agreement among more sites. What are you worried about? > If there is interest I can outline solutions to both the UUCP Mapping > Project goals and the Stargate project that would involved *zero* > cost to the end user or an absolute minimal cost If you can come up with a scheme that involves zero cost to not only the leaves but also the sites with 10 connections that spend 22 hours a day on the phone, I'm sure the backbone will swarm all over you with gratitude. I'm not kidding, either. The net still is a democracy (though that really isn't the right word; what I mean is, real power is still in the hands of everyone). For example, when the newsgroup renamings went through I ignored the rmgroups for all the old newsgroups. Even now we have 1.1 Mb in net.* groups (I've been deleting the old groups when they get empty, not necessarily when the rmgroup comes through). If anyone who talks to us also carries net.all, it will be fed around between us and them (and anyone else who wants to join us). der Mouse Smart mailers: mouse@mcgill-vision.uucp USA: {ihnp4,decvax,akgua,utzoo,etc}!utcsri!musocs!mcgill-vision!mouse think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse ARPAnet: think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse@harvard.harvard.edu
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (04/01/87)
One technical comment on Dave's diatribe: > ... implementing something that allows people to browse groups > by "keyword" or "topic" (and remove the whole concept of newsgroups > except as an administrative and transmission aid)... Give us a break, Dave, this one has been hashed over before. When we can't even get people to use the right newsgroups and pick sensible Subject headings, how can we expect them to get keywords right? (Doing it right automatically is an advanced AI project.) The successful keyword-based information systems generally have three characteristics: 1. Their keyword space is under tight central control. 2. The choice of keywords for an individual item is done by, or at least supervised by, professionals. 3. Even so, their retrieval ratios are abysmally bad. The few systematic studies that have been done have typically shown users who think they are getting 80% of the stuff they want, when they are really getting more like 30%. No kidding -- it really is that bad. By contrast, following discussions by topic is possible *today*, and the better news-reading programs make at least an attempt at it. No changes are needed to make this work, except perhaps convincing people to install and use better user interfaces. -- "We must choose: the stars or Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology the dust. Which shall it be?" {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
mangoe@mimsy.UUCP (04/03/87)
der Mouse writes: >Of course they did. They're paying for it, in large part. Several people have talked about "paying for it". THey seem to have forgotten that hplabs is a backbone site too. C G W
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (04/05/87)
> I agree with Taylor's suggestion that USENIX should have a special > meeting for discussing the whole direction of usenet. To allow maximum > participation from the members, it should be held as part of the summer > conference this year. There is such a meeting at *every* Usenix conference these days -- the Usenet BOF. It is big and well-attended. If you are thinking of something that would have official status with the Usenix Association, remember that Usenet (despite the similarity in name) has nothing to do with Usenix. The only connection is that many people are involved in both, and as a result of this, Usenix has been mildly interested in supporting experimental work aimed at improving the network used by many of its members. Bear in mind, also, when talking about mass meetings, that there is no hope of such a large gathering of such opinionated people coming to a real decision in any finite time. An airing of views is the best that can be hoped for. > As you can see, any shakeup of the usenet community resulting in > desertion of a small percentage of the sites could cause major segments > of the net to loose their connections. Actually the network is a *bit* more robust than your comments suggest. The Toronto-Ottawa area could probably survive the desertion of utzoo or the failure of a Toronto-Ottawa link, although there would be monumental chaos for a little while. Still, the point is well taken. Remember that one motive for Stargate is that our current structure cannot possibly accommodate continuing and seemingly unstoppable growth forever. Usenet will change or die; there is no third possibility. I doubt that any of the current backbone sites could survive another tenfold increase in traffic -- in fact it's amazing that things have held together this long. -- "We must choose: the stars or Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology the dust. Which shall it be?" {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
gds@sri-spam.UUCP (04/05/87)
I promise -- this won't be long. > Geoff Kuenning >> Dave Taylor > Here's a fact for you: you can register for a uucp domain name for $50 > a year. Here's another fact: you can't connect to usenet without a > modem that costs at least $150, and a phone line that costs you at least > $8 per month (true, you can share the line, but on a time basis Usenet > clearly should be allocated most of the costs). > > In light of those costs, and the cost of the computer you need to read news, > I don't think it's really very reasonable to complain about a fee for > registering in a database. $50 is not that much. Also, you don't have to register -- you can send your uucp paths around, and wish repliers good luck. However, I think there is some concern that certain sites will withdraw, or refuse to participate in usenet if the "costs" of joining are made visible to those who are less likely to pay, in light of the current SNR. > > Similarly, it is quite disturbing that the UUCP Mapping Project... > > [is] expecting quite a bit of money from people. This is > > *not* at all in the best interests of the membership. > > The hell it's not. What you miss is that some of us use this network > for business that matters to us monetarily. I am perfectly willing > to pay $1000/yr (hear that, Mark? that's not a typo; a thousand > dollars is CHEAP) if it will give me reliable electronic > mail. "reliability" of uucp mail will not be accomplished by using domain names, I fear. I would appreciate it if one of the members of the UUCP Project would comment on what the charges they levy will be used for. I am not complaining -- I'd just like to hear how they intend to spend the money, if any are willing to comment. Does it go straight into their pockets as compensation for services rendered? Is it being used to pay for the hotline, or disk space to compose uucp maps, or computer time to develop software? (Apologies if this has been discussed before -- I don't follow usenet as closely as I used to.) > > I think a special meeting of the USENIX Association is in order, Perhaps a BOF at the next Usenix? (Unfortunately I don't think I'll be there, unless I can find some funds to pay for it.) > > Further examples of the perversion of the Unix community... > > Five years or so ago when I started reading Usenet, it was > > a free-wheeling teleconferencing system, quite fun, quite strange, and > > generally, a good way to spend a small bit of my time. > > In the past > > few years, however, a so-called Backbone Cabal has arisen that has > > more-or-less taken over the network and imposed their own ideas and > > beliefs upon it. > Wrong again. It was by vote. Five years ago, there were about 100 sites, maybe, and far less volume. Phone time, disk space, etc. were fare more tolerable. However, now that we are bogged down in volume, the people who must foot the largest % of the bill must be able to justify the costs, or reduce them if possible. I don't agree with all the things the "backbone cabal" has done but realize that it was either that, or they would leave. What would happen if the "backbone" left is debatable. I don't think usenet would grind to a halt -- in fact, I suspect there are other "backbones" out there which would carry the news. The propagation might be slower, though. Or maybe not. Who knows? However, I don't recall any votes that put the "backbone cabal" in charge. Nor do I recall any voting for general usenet policy. The only votes seem to be for what newsgroups to create, and where to put them. This is not to say that they are unrightfully in charge, because the fact that they are paying a certain % for running the net should give them that much of a % in saying how it should be run. I'm just trying to get terminology straight. (For the record, I would like to see usenet run more democratically, but this does not seem possible, because no one would agree on a set of laws which everyone could abide by.) > [with respect to "forcing" (Dave's words) out-of-date sites to update:] > > Totally regardless of whether they are actually willing and able to > > do it...If they don't change, tough luck. Let 'em die. Dave is talking about the conversion from 2.10.3 to 2.11.whatever, with respect to moderated group handling. Geoff is talking about no longer complying with A news, or some other outdated news (2.10 maybe). There's a big difference. I imagine at sites where people post to moderated groups, the SA's will get tired of hearing complaints about being unable to post to the moderated group, and will put the patches in. 2.11 is not necessary for normal reading/posting/replying, though. I don't see anything generally incompatible with recent news versions (more recent than 2.10.1 perhaps). However, backwards-compliance can't be done forever. You have to draw the line somewhere. I would hope that those sites which are running A news would upgrade so they could take advantage of the latest features. > > The crux, here, is that there is no reason why we can't have either > > free or minimal cost systems...If there is interest I can outline solutions > > ...that would involved *zero* cost to the end user... > My perception is that every single person working on either Stargate > or the UUCP project would be OVERJOYED to have you volunteer you help. > However, I suspect most would appreciate it if you took the time > to investigate all the aspects of the situation before offering > an unschooled opinion. It'll never be free to distribute posted articles. It'll never be free to forward other people's mail. Whatever you come up with will cost as much as it takes to distribute which are the best point-to-point uucp connections, and what the domain names of those uucp nodes are. If this could be made cheaper than the current cost of registering names in the UUCP domain, plus the current cost of distributing the current maps, that would be good. Oh well, this was a little longer than I'd intended. --gregbo
ccplumb@watnot.UUCP (04/07/87)
There seem to be two complaints here: 1) This map entry registration fee, which I object to. 2) The `Backbone Cabal' running things somewhat oligarchically, which I believe is defensible. (oligarchy, n, rule by a small group of (usually absolute) dicatators) I think it's a Good Thing that it currently costs *nothing* to first get into usenet. You just need the hardware and some grovelling for a feed. This lets any poor news addict join up their site on their own authority. All they need do is spend a bit of their spare time keeping inews up. If any real money is involved, it very likely needs authorization from a management type, who may not see the need. This is what supplies the anarchistic character that is so nice about the net. Of course, once the site has news, people can get to liking it, it can become officially supported, the site can look for faster (but possibly longer-distance) feeds, give them to others, and start pulling weight. At this point, the site is spending a non-trivial amount of money to keep usenet working, and that fact gives them some authority. If a downstream site makes itself objectionable, it can always be dumped. This lack of control is another facet of anarchy. Your say in how the work is done is strictly related to how much of the work you do. Disquieting, especially if something (like a budget) is holding you back from doing more work, but it works this way. The backbones spend a hell of a lot of money keeping usenet running, so I think the say they have is justified. -- -Colin Plumb (watmath!watnot!ccplumb) Silly quote: The die has been cast on the face of the waters.
johnc@haddock.UUCP (04/08/87)
>> > In the past >> > few years, however, a so-called Backbone Cabal has arisen that has >> > more-or-less taken over the network and imposed their own ideas and >> > beliefs upon it. > >> Wrong again. It was by vote. > >However, I don't recall any votes that put the "backbone cabal" in >charge. Nor do I recall any voting for general usenet policy There weren't any, because it's not feasible. The "backbone cabal" doesn't have nearly the power that many people think. Why not? Well, consider that this company has set up its own internal distribution with a bunch of newsgroups that only go to our own sites. The cabal has no control over them whatsoever; they can't even find out that these newsgroups exist unless they can get into the distribution. Any two or more sites in the world can do the same thing. Just hook up some sort of link that runs a file-transfer package like uucp or kermit or TCP/IP or whatever, explain to usenet how to use it, run "inews -C", and you're off and running. The usenet installation guide explains it all. Lots of organizations have their own usenet subset. Last year, I helped another company do the same sort of thing. This is one of the nice things about usenet. It's possible for a set of "backbone" sites to offer themselves up as a public service (and perhaps charge for the service). They can be as autocratic as they wish on traffic that passes through their machines. But there's no way they can be dictators. You want a "forbidden" newsgroup? Fine; make a few connections, and create your own distribution. The manual tells you how to do it, and the Cabal can't stop you. Personally, I think the Backbone Cabal is doing the world a service. They are under no obligation to run their machines to satisfy anyone but themselves, but they are offering to forward your mail (and my rantings here) for "free". All they get out of it is a lot of good publicity. Sometimes I wonder why they do it at all. As for net.rec.drugs, whaddaya wanna bet that the suppliers of illicit drugs are using email to coordinate their business? They probably have their own mob.rec.drugs newsgroup up and running. Why don't you ask your local dealer about it? Maybe you can get on the distribution. -- John Chambers (617)247-1155 <...!ima!johnc> [The above opinions are my own; for a small fee, they can be yours, too.]
jsdy@hadron.UUCP (04/12/87)
I seem to remember "Mark's Mob" [;-) smile, m. Horton] taking a straw
vote at several Usenix meetings on what those people present wanted
to do about the "news problem." I don't remember any clear concensus
emerging. What the "Cabal" seem to have done is tell everyone what
newsgroups THEY will be carrying, and what people hooked up to that
backbone can expect. They even agreed on a schedule, so that prople
could get prepared, and tried to map as many of the old loved groups
into new ones as possible. They also provide some administrative
services for free: e.g., if you don't want to worry about rmgroup
messages, then they'll remotely disconnect groups that they're no
longer sending you. (Personally, I hate it when a rmgroup gets here
before the construction of the corresponding new newsgroup ...) There
may be a little more to it than that, but they and folks who agree
with them (like me?) keep pointing out that anyone can form their own
set of connections and even their own Backbone.
Joe Yao jsdy@hadron.COM (not yet domainised)
hadron!jsdy@{seismo.CSS.GOV,dtix.ARPA,decuac.DEC.COM}
{arinc,att,avatar,cos,decuac,dtix,ecogong,kcwc}!hadron!jsdy
{netex,netxcom,rlgvax,seismo,smsdpg,sundc}!hadron!jsdy