From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!uwvax!solomon Newsgroups: net.news,net.mail Title: Re: The USENET corporation, a whole new way to run usenet Article-I.D.: crystal.154 Posted: Sat Jan 8 09:35:29 1983 Received: Sun Jan 9 02:19:11 1983 Tom Truscott seems to feel that CSNET is competing with UUCP. In fact, CSNET was created to fill a specific need and serve a specific community. As Tom points out, CSNET is doing a few things that UUCP should have done long ago but never got around to. To answer a few specific questions: As of Jan 7, CSNET had 46 PhoneNet sites operational and another 12 that have received the software but not yet installed it. In addition, there are 19 ARPANET CSNET members, two PhoneNet relays (Udel and Rand) and the Service Host at Wisconsin. These are numbers of sites, not hosts; some sites have multiple hosts with local relaying. CSNET is growing rapidly, but as you can see it's still nowhere near as large as the UUCP community. CSNET was founded with development support from NSF, but it is to become self-supporting through dues and fees. In fact, the first set of invoices has already been mailed to member sites. During the period of subsidy, the management was understandably cautious about the amount and kind of traffic supported by "the taxpayers", hence the reluctance to support netnews. There really is no secret plot to impose censorship. Some of the problems Tom cites, particularly the need for users to use a separate mail user interface for PhoneNet mail, have been removed. More details are available from the hotline number at the end of this note. Finally, let me try reassure everyone that CSNET is not operating in a vacuum or trying to reinvent the wheel. We are working closely with Berkeley to integrate CSNET software with the Berkeley version of UNIX, and the 4.2 release will include CSNET software. We are also talking with Bell Labs regarding UUCP/CSNET interface issues. For more information, please contact: CSNET CIC Bolt Beranek and Newman 10 Moulton St. Cambridge, MA 02238 (617) 497-2777 CIC@CSNET-SH uwvax!cic (via seismo, harpo, allegra, intelqa, or ucbvax)