[1385] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The REAL news about SIMTEL20
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Edward Vielmetti)
Fri Sep 20 16:33:27 1991
To: com-priv@psi.com, ebaas@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Cc: stgeorge@bootes.unm.edu, granoff@technet.nm.org
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 91 16:30:49 -0400
From: Edward Vielmetti <emv@ox.com>
> From: SMTP%"EBAAS@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL" 19-SEP-1991 22:27:31.35
> To: GRANOFF@TECHNET.NM.ORG
> RE: SIMTEL 20 STATUS
> Yes, "the untimely death of the Simtel has been highly exaggerated." It
> was rather irresponsible that Keith Peterson who kept one of the librar-
> ies on the Simtel sent a message which said that there was no funding for
> the task. He knows that we must fund the project from customers, and that
> we do not always have the money on "opening day" (Oct 1). We hope to have
> the money soon; if not we will have someone in-house perform the work.
There are some things which need to be cleared up about this message.
This is not the first time that the MS-DOS archives at SIMTEL20 have
been left unfunded for a period of several months, the most recently
between the months of May and September 1990. Note that at this point
money for the system ran out during the middle of the fiscal year and
was not restored until the following fiscal year. There appears to be
no reason to believe based on past history that this is the last time
that SIMTEL will be unable to provide continuous funding support.
Archive maintenance, esp. for a system with worldwide use and quality
as SIMTEL20 has, is not a part-time job. An extended outage of
several months and the resulting discontinuity of service is as
disruptive as stopping the acquisition of new titles at a library.
It's not a task which lends itself neatly to part-time temporary
"in-house" work, no more than you would temporarily allow the patrons
of a government repository library to take over the processing,
cataloging, and evaluation of new documents for a while when there's
no money to pay the librarians.
In Keith's shoes I'd consider his decision to let it be known what the
status of his position is to be quite pragmatic, not in the least bit
"irresponsible" as you have characterized it. And despite the fact
that our very own Sen. Gore says
...the network is a national "information superhighway" and
[it] will "strengthen our economy, improve our ability to
compete overseas and provide the jobs of the future for
American workers."
it appears that the current prospects for making a living from
providing necessary internet infrastructure are uneven at best.
--
Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. emv@msen.com
MSEN, Inc. 628 Brooks Ann Arbor MI 48103 +1 313 741 1120
for information on MSEN products and services contact info@msen.com
