[2525] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Books and journals on-line from publishers and vendors
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Fri Mar 13 15:29:14 1992
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 92 15:26:18 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: steve@cise.cise.nsf.gov
Cc: SEAN@sdg.dra.com, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Stephen Wolff's message of Fri, 13 Mar 92 09:20:09 EST <9203131420.AA17671@ncri>
>From: Stephen Wolff <steve@cise.cise.nsf.gov>
>Be sure when you talk to publishers and vendors that you emphasize the
>importance to their business (as well as to our user communities) of making
>their catalogs and indices freely accessible - e.g., by WAIS.
If you're in a balkanized section of the network (as we are) the
general net community can not get to your WAIS server. Are we missing
each other on the underlying problem? Restructuring the data doesn't
re-connect the network.
Until BARRnet joined CIX we (world.std.com) could not reach the WAIS
root server at quake.think.com. So WAIS was rendered mostly a local
curio, we could neither participate nor contribute. WAIS offers no
solution (nor should it I don't think) to a bifurcated network.
I certainly discussed putting Quantum's catalog of technical titles
under WAIS (I even sent a message to the wais list back then asking if
anyone had software support for unix refer format or similar) with the
vendor. One problem with Wais is that it's not structured, it doesn't
distinguish author's names from titles from publishers (which may or
may not be a problem, or perhaps I misunderstand?)
Right now I'm not sure if it's the right thing to proceed with.
We can get to the root WAIS server, but many sites thus pointed to us
will not be able to get to our server which I suspect will fill my
mailbox with another 500 questions as to why, tho I may do it anyhow.
Note: Fully connected sites jumping up to volunteer to be the WAIS
server for Quantum is exactly the wrong answer. If they can do that,
why can't we? How many other services (and MB) are you willing to take
on soas to work around AUP?
-Barry Shein
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