[348] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: pointless bickering
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James B. Van Bokkelen)
Mon Mar 11 19:04:56 1991
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 91 14:25:42 -0500
To: droms@bucknell.edu
From: jbvb@ftp.com (James B. Van Bokkelen)
Reply-To: jbvb@ftp.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
My opinion is that the diversity and level of expertise (perhaps
"tolerance"?) of the Internet community has actually stifled
development of new distributed applications.
Diversity is definitely a factor, but it isn't as important as lack of
real commitment to open systems from vendors. There are a lot out there
who thought that a bug-compatible port of the 4bsd protocol stack and
applications was all they'd ever have to do; In fact, I only have hard
evidence of one Unix vendor who has actually pursued a major test and
bug fix program on their own initiative. Everyone else just treated
4bsd as the reference standard...
We're trying to push new functionality in distributed mail protocols
right now, but we only have the client end, and we don't have the
resources or focus to try to solve the N-squared problem of
implementing things like PCMAIL for all possible hosts. So, we have
the chicken-and-egg problem with customers who want supported servers.
We don't know if we've enough installed base to make other vendors
notice and add support, and even if we do, it will take two years
to see the effects in the field.
One of the reasons behind the HRRFCs was that the community perceived
that they were critically important; that without major improvement
in interoperability and standards conformance, the Internet couldn't
survive its growth. The recent effort to write an RFC for the 4bsd
LPR protocol was also driven by an unfilled need.
I suspect that the next step is going to be the use of the Internet
by the community to organize advocacy for improvements; an informal
"user's group". This will free the vendors from their current
bind of "which thread in these hightly informal standards efforts
shall I follow"? We wrote both POP and PCMAIL in order to avoid
being on the wrong side when the dust settles, but not every vendor
would do that, or even be able to identify the viable candidates.
The community has to do that for them.
James B. VanBokkelen 26 Princess St., Wakefield, MA 01880
FTP Software Inc. voice: (617) 246-0900 fax: (617) 246-0901
