Xref: utzoo comp.mail.uucp:1588 comp.mail.headers:379
Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!yale!husc6!ukma!david
From: david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: Real data to support my claim that '-d sun' is the way to go.
Message-ID: <10145@g.ms.uky.edu>
Date: 9 Aug 88 15:35:01 GMT
References: <3703@palo-alto.DEC.COM> <10139@g.ms.uky.edu> <3721@palo-alto.DEC.COM> <10141@g.ms.uky.edu> <63372@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae)
Organization: U of Kentucky, Mathematical Sciences
Lines: 86

In article <63372@sun.uucp> nowicki%rose@Sun.COM (Bill Nowicki) writes:
>In article <10141@g.ms.uky.edu>, david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) writes:
>> I am curious why nobody from Sun is here defending their honor.
>> Yoo Hoo!  Anybody home at Sun?  Anybody wanna defend their sendmail
>> configuration there?
>Sure, we are home, but only have time to deal with Usenet flames about
>once a week.  Most time is spent supporting paying customers. :-)

uh, well, goshy gee whillickers.  I look around the cs dept and see
a *few* Sun's so we must be paying customers ... hmmm. :-)  We even
have at least one of them nifty keano new and improved Sun 4's! (big) :-)
(Not here in CS, but there is >=1 on campus)

>Unfortunately your claim that "all rewriting of From: lines is wrong"
>is not correct unless EVERYONE is doing UUCP routing.  For example,
>consider:
>
>	siteA --uucp--> sun --uucp--> siteB

I didn't claim that.  This site rewrites From: lines all the time.
If anybody claimed that it was Paul.  Any claim I would have made
is that if you're going to rewrite From: lines then DO IT RIGHT!

>The From: line starts out as "From: siteA!user", and we rewrite it
>as "From: siteA!user@Sun.COM", which then gets rewritten going out
>as "From: sun!siteA!user".  The flamers are saying this is "RUDE".
>But if we did NOT do it, then when the recipient at siteB replied
>to the message, it would fail unless siteB were running UUCP routing
>software.  Since the standard UUCP software from AT&T (AND BERKELEY!!)
>DOES NOT support UUCP routing, this is usually not the case.  Thus we
>try to be conservative, so that the recipient can reply if they do
>UUCP routing or not. Since almost all of our mail is either directly
>to us, or relayed through one hop, or relayed from all machines
>that rewrite the header (i.e. standard Sun-issue software), we chose
>to have a policy that causes these paths to generate replyable headers.

It sounds to me as if the short version is this paragraph is

	We run primitive software!  Nyahh!  Nyahh!

Look.  Communications is important.  One of the large reasons
for the existance of the computers we have *here* (at UK) is
for e-mail with colleagues.  I suspect that any site which
takes part in Usenet also would like to have a good e-mail
system.  As would most other places where you guys sell computers.

Saying that standard software doesn't do good e-mail is not
a good excuse.  For one thing I was under the impression that
you guys were going to be able to make some strong influences
on the next version of the Standard Software.  Tho' that was
described as putting BSD features in -- like the fast file system
and some other niceties...

Be that as it may.  How are things to improve if a major player
is saying "we won't improve things"?  I, a customer speaking here,
would love to see you guys (not just Sun but AT&T, BSD, DEC, etc)
to provide capable e-mail software with your systems.  One *really*
*GOOD* way of testing the e-mail software before letting your
customers at it is to run it in house in a production environment
for awhile.

I once defended Sun's honor to a DEC salesman who was claiming
that DEC had far better communications capabilities than Sun
did.  I knew fully well that Sun has all sorts of capabilities
and that it's the equal of the capabilities in VMS.  At least,
give each their intended environment (DECNET || INTERNET) and
they'll have equivalent capabilities.  But now that I see this
attitude I'm not so sure.  At least with DEC's "primary" OS they
deliver a mailer that can route mail world-wide ... :-) (sort of)

>[Just because you're running UUCP routing software doesn't mean
> everyone is ...]

To which I say .... *SO*???



Now.  Don't take me wrong.  I'm mostly happy with the Sun equipment
we have.  It's good reasonable stuff.  The software is a little strange
sometimes, but then every company puts out strange stuff sometimes.
I just want to see the world improve is all.
-- 
<---- David Herron -- The E-Mail guy                         
<---- ska: David le casse\*'      {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<----
<---- Looking forward to a particularly blatant, talkative and period bikini ...