[243] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Other Researchers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John S. Quarterman)
Thu Feb 28 16:37:36 1991
From: John S. Quarterman <jsq@tic.com>
To: Dan Schlitt <dan@sci.ccny.cuny.edu>
Cc: craig@sics.se, jqj@duff.uoregon.edu, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 28 Feb 91 12:07:05 -0500.
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 91 14:33:05 -0600
>One of the problems is that many faculty members have a firmly held
>belief that network == BITNET. This is strongest in the non-science
>areas because of the increasing use of LISTSERV mailing list by these
>people. In the science areas there are additional beliefs induced
>because SPAN and the highenergy physics community established DECnet
>based networks. This means that the TCP/IP network community has some
>education to do about the relative advantage of the Internet.
Actually, as long as BITNET has LISTSERV and the Internet does not,
BITNET has the relative advantage for people who want to have small,
easily controllable, yet distributed discussion groups. Unfortunately,
the main reason that there is no LISTSERV on the Internet is the firmly
held belief by most Internet people that LISTSERV == mailing lists. A
similar problem exists with BITNET interactive messages. There are
also apparently DECNET services that don't map directly to Internet
applications. The TCP/IP community needs to be more receptive to ideas
from outside before it can make a convincing case that the Internet is
better.
--
John S. Quarterman
Texas Internet Consulting jsq@tic.com tel: +1-512-320-9031
701 Brazos, Suite 500 uunet!longway!jsq fax: +1-512-320-5821
Austin, TX 78701
