USENIX Board Studies UUCP

[News system owner ID]

henry at utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
< If you really want a UUCP replacement to catch on, it has to be something
< that *everyone*, even the folks with nervous lawyers or absolutely no money,
< can run, and that vendors can distribute without extra paperwork or cost.

For a real-world example of just this (even a communications
program!), just look at the way Columbia handles Kermit.  The Columbia
license for use is even less restrictive than the FSF license
(partially because the Columbia folks aren't out to prove something
religious about software, freedom, and intellectual property).

If it isn't free, it won't be as widely distributed as, say, Kermit or
Emacs or TeX.

As a side note, I've thought of purposing Kermit as a new UUCP
protocol, because it's a good worst-case fall back (Kermit is even
better than 'g' at getting around bad communication situations).

		-- Paul Placeway <pplaceway at bbn.com>
		   (Mac Kermit coord; comm. hacker in general)