[302] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: pointless bickering
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John S. Quarterman)
Tue Mar 5 13:14:41 1991
From: jsq@tic.com (John S. Quarterman)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Cc: jsq@tic.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 04 Mar 91 23:48:44 -0500.
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 91 10:40:17 -0600
This discussion reminds me of the three blind men and the elephant.
Each one felt a different part of the elephant.
The first blind man felt the elephant's tail and said ``this is
long and thin and twitches all over the place, so an elephant
surely must be a mailing list, just like I'm used to!''
The second blind man felt the elephant's trunk and said ``this is
thick and flexible and has a big hole in the end where anything can
get in, so it must surely be netnews, just like I'm used to!''
The third blind man felt the elephant's leg and said ``this is
wide and stout and can carry a big load, so it might as well be FTP,
just like I'm used to!''
An elephant is really none of those things (mailing lists, netnews,
and FTP are actually the tail, nose, and leg of a committee camel),
and the three blind men aren't really blind, just wearing mirrorshades
to avoid having to look at what they're talking about, but it's
still a nice story.
John
PS: ``But we can make the camel's tail like the elephant, if we
just take some of this straw people have been throwing over here
and tie it to the end!'' said the first blind man.
``But we can make the camel's nose like the elephant, if we just
grab hold and pull real hard until it stretches until it reaches
the tail and then we'll use some of that straw to tie it there!''
said the second blind man.
``But the camel stands on one leg anyway!'' said the third blind man.
``And we've always *had* a camel and we don't *want* an elephant!''
chorused the onlookers.
PPS: Me, I'd rather have a riding horse than a camel *or* an elephant,
but as long as the only ways software gets widely distributed on the
Internet are through government grant supported projects (BSD, Mach),
heroic efforts by single companies to coordinate others (NFS), or gratuitous
acts of volunteers (NNTP) occasionally supported by committees (IETF),
we're going to be stuck with a cranky camel.
This is the real issue, which I was using LISTSERV and the above fable
to illustrate.
