From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!utah-cs!lepreau
Newsgroups: net.news
Title: Re: Proposal for USENET Organization
Article-I.D.: utah-cs.1269
Posted: Sat Jan  1 01:36:01 1983
Received: Sun Jan  2 00:49:53 1983
References: fortune.710 omsvax.283 houxm.285

Oh brother.  Certainly the amount of communication in this epitome of
anarachy, the uucp net, is remarkable.  But the amount of lost mail and
unreplyable cc lists and absurdly long paths is just as remarkable.  I
am sick and tired of people proclaiming that standards are for the
birds.  That may well be fine, and certainly fun, when hacking away at
software on one machine, but IT FAILS TOTALLY WHERE NETWORKS ARE
CONCERNED!  If you don't agree on a common protocol then you can't talk.
It's that simple.  And if you don't agree on some sort of standards then
you will have zilch reliablity and convenience.  Every goddamn uucp site
between you and me is perfectly free to throw this mail on the floor (as
uucp does all the time, never mind rmail) and never tell anyone.  And if
someone redoes uucp and mail making them reliable and functional and
give them away only half the sites will install them within a year. 
Yeah, it's real nice having no central control.

But it's not going to last forever that way.  Happy New Year.

-Jay Lepreau  (also at lepreau@utah-cs.  Where we have just converted to
arpa-dictated new protocols as of this morning.  And we will survive and
probably even benefit!)