Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!vsi!friedl
From: friedl@vsi.UUCP (Stephen J. Friedl)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: I thought we were in this together -- AT&T not upholding its end..
Summary: AT&T supply netnews?  Are you kidding?
Message-ID: <728@vsi.UUCP>
Date: 24 Jun 88 07:14:15 GMT
References: <875@flatline.UUCP> <897@flatline.UUCP> <457@happym.UUCP>
Organization: V-Systems, Inc. -- Santa Ana, CA
Lines: 33

In article <457@happym.UUCP>, kent@happym.UUCP (Kent Forschmiedt) writes:
> Why doesn't AT&T include a decent mailer with their operating 
> system?  And, yes, include news, with LIBDIR/sys preconfigured to 
> only handle map distribution (after reading the manual, the admin 
> can figure out how to use the rest).

     Gasp!  AT&T would be out of their minds to try to support
smail or netnews.  The *overwhelming* majority of AT&T's
customers (with the 3B2s, at least) have no interest whatsoever
in netnews or even intermachine email; those living in the
technical and academic worlds have no idea how uninterested most
end-users are in this kind of thing.  They buy their computers to
run payroll or property management or insurance administration.
In addition, most AT&T UNIX machines don't have C compilers.
Really, we are in the minority.

     AT&T has enough trouble helping people plug in their
terminals, much less get netnews going.  Please do not
underestimate the resources required to support any kind of
product (especially netnews).

     I could go on and on about this, but I won't.  AT&T will
never support netnews to their customers.

     Steve

P.S. - this is not a flame, just an observation :-)

-- 
Steve Friedl    V-Systems, Inc. (714) 545-6442      3B2-kind-of-guy
friedl@vsi.com     {backbones}!vsi.com!friedl    attmail!vsi!friedl

Nancy Reagan on the Free Software Foundation : "Just say GNU"