UUCP USERFILE

[Charles Hedrick]

I assume you aren't serious about V7 UUCP?  Berkeley's UUCP has had a lot of
work done on it since V7.  I don't doubt that these things could be merged
with whatever ATT has done, but our UUCP usage depends heavily on the
ability to make connections over TCP, which is a feature of newer Berkeley
UUCP's.  We have only a few machines that make dialup connections.  The rest
of our local machines forward everything through them, making their
connection to the relay machine via Ethernet.  UUCP over the Arpanet or
CSnet can also be very useful in some cases.

As for vendor policy, there is a philosophical issue as to what you should
get when you buy 4.2 from a vendor.  When I buy 4.2, I expect my users and
staff to be able to use 4.2 documentation to deal with the system.  We have
a number of different machines.  We do not want each machine to have a
random combination of features chosen from 4.2, 4.3, SVr2, and SVr3.  I
would not mind having System V UUCP as an option, if there is really some
improvement, but I expect Berkeley's to be there if I have bought a system
that is claimed to be Berkeley Unix.  Pyramid, which you mention, is of
course the last place you would expect to find a System V UUCP mixed into a
4.2 system.  They maintain separate 4.2 and System V universes.  Thus they
have two separate UUCP's.  We use the 4.2 UUCP, so I can't tell you much
about their System V UUCP.  But based on the results of "what", it looks
like a fairly recent (i.e. release 2 or release 2.2) System V version.

By the way, is the new Userfile a feature of SVr2, SVr3, or HoneyDanber
UUCP?  SVr3 hasn't had time to make it out through vendors yet, and the
vendors I have talked to aren't yet sure which of the extra-cost ATT stuff
such as HoneyDanber their users are really going to want.

There may indeed be licensing problems preventing Berkeley from using System
V UUCP.  I should let people who know more about this answer that question.
My only talk with someone at a managerial level in System V left the
impression that ATT had no interest in cooperating with Berkeley.  (To be 
fair, I have since heard rumors that are far more encouraging.)