From: utzoo!decvax!duke!mcnc!rti!trt
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: "Network without news"
Article-I.D.: rti.1011
Posted: Fri Feb 11 11:39:47 1983
Received: Sat Feb 12 05:41:06 1983

References: utah-cs.1356

Uucp is not the place to add 'a mail protocol'.
Nor should uucp have 'a news protocol',
a 'uusend protocol', and so on.

The *mail* program should manage an end-to-end protocol.
Uux's job is to deliver a file to a process, not to guarantee tha
that the process executes correctly.

I heard Eric Allman's talk on sendmail at UNICOM,
and concluded that his mailer still depends on:
	The existence of an 'rmail' program at each site.
	Sufficient disk space to hold various spooling files.
	No machine crashes during the uux->rmail->uux handoff.
Otherwise, mail gets dropped on the floor.

Uucp should be enhanced to do many things: routing, faster transfers,
fewer errors.  But errors do happen, and any program which uses
uucp must account for them or mail, news, or whatever
will 'fall through the cracks.'
	Tom Truscott