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From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Committees
Message-ID: <1015@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 3-Jun-84 12:43:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: nsc.1015
Posted: Sun Jun  3 12:43:56 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 5-Jun-84 20:22:28 EDT
References: <1423@cbosgd.UUCP> <666@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Organization: The Warlocks Cave
Lines: 68

> I'd rather see some improvements to the software

Werner:

Laudible thought. Do I hear you volunteering for this? What do we do while
you are writing and debugging this wonderful code? What will your employer
say while you spend this time doing usenet work instead of real work? When
it is all said and done, how in the HELL are you going to get every site to
use the damn stuff? Are you going to make the same wonderful improvements
to notes and turn them into reasonable systems?

Let us PLEASE look at reality for once:

	a> If we KNEW what improvements to the software would make it work
	right, we could skip this step. Unfortunately, we don't. We need to
	figure out what we need to write. Ok, lets appoint a committee of
	people to define the next evolution of usenet software. Aha, 2
	months later we are still arguing about the committee. The
	committee spends 2 months arguing about software and posts its
	results. The net argues about the results for 2 months and 93
	revisions. Everyone gets mad at everyone else. We are now in
	January 1985.

	b> We now get to write the code. Assuming it is relatively trivial
	(say a total of 6-8 man-months) working weekends and evenings a
	small group of people can get it running in 3 or 4 months. It then
	goes to one person for integration. Another month working out
	inconsistencies. Beta test at one site, one or two months. Beta
	test on a few sites, one or two months, maybe less. Let's be
	optimistic: May 1985.

	c> Distribution: We ship. Everyone stands up and cheers. The truly
	courageous sites install. Bugs show up. they are posted, fixed.
	More bugs. More sites, more bugs. more fixes. Many sites won't
	touch a new release for a month, for six months, for a year. There
	are still an enormous number of sites running 2.9 and A news, for
	Gawds sake. Ok, lets say in 6 months 'most' sites have converted
	and the software is stable. We are now in November of 1985 and the
	wonderful Usenet upgrade project is a wonderful success. Or is it?

The best we could hope for (absolute) is about 80% penetration by the new
software. This assumes that EVERY usenet site converts. This is because
there is no provision in this for notes. Now, we KNOW that there are sites
that for various reasons won't even go to 2.10 or 2.10.1 regardless of the
wonders involved there. Why should the upgrade further? And for all this
wonderful new software we wrote, if there are even a few sites out there
that don't use it the system breaks down because it takes only ONE of those
sites to screw up the software.

Look. We have to face the fact that the inertia on the net is such that
software solutions simply can't work at this point in time. Even if we
COULD wait until we got the software it doesn't solve the problem of sites
that won't use it. We need to figure out some way to make the status quo
work more efficiently (or in the view of some, at all) before it crashes
down on top of us. Once we get the current system under control we can look
for ways of improving. I agree that usenet without a committee is the best
of all possible worlds, but I don't think it is an alternative right now.
The alternatives are a usenet with some group guiding it or a usenet that
breaks and stops working. The network has grown much too fast for its own
good, and we need to get it back under control somehow.

chuq


-- 
From the closet of anxieties of:			Chuq Von Rospach
{amd70,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4}!nsc!chuqui			(408) 733-2600 x242

I'm sure I have my death ray in here somewhere...