Message-ID: <anews.Acbosgd.794>
Newsgroups: net.news
Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!cbosg!cbosgd!mark
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From: cbosgd!mark
Date: Wed Dec 23 21:28:32 1981
Subject: proposed USENET policies

The following policies for USENET are proposed.  Comments are invited.

		Proposed USENET Policies

The most important consideration is the USENET exists for and by
the users, and should respond to the needs of those users.  As needs
arise, users should be allowed to make proposals which all interested
users can vote on.

USENET is a cashless network.  No person or organization may charge
another organization for news, except that by prearrangement, one
site (a) may be required to pay the expenses incurred by another site (b)
in sending news to site (a).  Such expenses include the cost of phone
calls and equipment, but only to the extent that such expenses would
not be incurred if site (b) did not send news to site (a).  Each site
is expected to carry its own local costs.  If a site receives news, it
should be willing to forward that news on to at least two additional sites.

News articles are divided into a number of classes.  Each site may decide
which classes it wants to accept and which classes it forwards to its
neighboring sites.  Classes sanctioned by USENET include the following:
	net	Computer Science related topics.  Articles on these
		newsgroups have professional or academic orientation,
		and generally have direct benefit to the organizations
		on the network.
	fa	Like net, but copies of mailing lists from the ARPANET.

	pers	Topics of personal interest, such as hobbies.  Such topics
		do not necessarily relate to the job a person is doing,
		and can be viewed as a "spare time" activity.
	fpa	Like fa, but for personal topics.
Portions of USENET, such as a group of machines which are all part of
one company or university, may form additional classes of newsgroup for
distribution within that portion of the network.  They may apply any
standards to these classes they wish.

Articles posted to USENET sanctioned classes are expected to be of high
quality.  The name of the author should be signed.  Articles which are
likely to be offensive to any part of the user community should not be
posted.  Peer pressure via direct electronic mail will, hopefully,
prevent any further distastful or offensive articles.  Repeated
violations of this policy can be grounds for removing a user or site
from the network.

In the past, it has been too easy for any user to create a new newsgroup.
This has resulted in a disorganized and inconsistent set of newsgroups.
Newsgroups in the four categories above will be created by a member of
the USENET committee.  A user wishing to create a new newsgroup should
propose it by posting an article to net.general (or pers.general, as
appropriate).  Others wishing to subscribe to the newsgroup should send
direct electronic mail to the first user.  If there is enough interest
to warrent creation of the newsgroup, the user should send the replies
to the committee, who will create the newsgroup (possibly with a different
name or class).

---- end of policy statement
(The formation of the committee is undecided.  It would probably contain
people such as myself, glickman, swd, trt, smb, and jte, depending on
time and interest.)

I propose dividing the existing newsgroups up as follows.  This is not
a hard and fast division, and I will be happy to listen to suggested
redivisions.  The rationalle behind putting net.chess in net is that
it is Computer Science research related.  The microcomputer groups were
put in pers because they are mostly for the hobbyist.  But the real
criterion is whether a system which is "all business" would want to
receive a given group - comments from such systems are especially welcome.

	net.general			Usenet news of general interest
	net.applic			Applicative programming languages
	net.bugs.all			Bug reports on various software
		net.bugs.2bsd		Berkeley pdp-11 distribution
		net.bugs.4bsd		Berkeley VAX distribution
		net.bugs.u3		UNIX 3.0
		net.bugs.v7		Version 7 bugs
	net.chess			Computer chess
	net.eunice			The Eunice Unix emulator for VMS
	net.news			News about netnews
		net.news.b		Version B news
	net.periphs			Hardware peripherals
	net.test			Test messages, not interesting.
	net.ucds			UNIX circuit design system

	pers.rec.all			Participant sports (recreation)
		pers.rec.ski		Skiing (formerly net.ski)
		pers.rec.scuba		Diving (formerly net.scuba)
	pers.rumor			Rumors about software, hardware, etc.
	pers.sport.all			All spectator sports mailing lists
		pers.sport.baseball	Baseball
		pers.sport.football	Football
		pers.sport.hockey	Hockey
	pers.auto.all			Car owner discussions/queries
		pers.auto.vw		Volkswagen Rabbit
	pers.aviation			Aviation topics
	pers.columbia			News about the space program
	pers.cycle			Motorcycle topics
	pers.games			Computer games of the /usr/games type
	pers.games.rogue			That wonderful game
	pers.ham-radio			Ham radio
	pers.jokes			The latest good joke you heard
		pers.jokes.q		We drop this newsgroup
	pers.movies			Movie reviews
	pers.music			What is this group about, anyway?

	fa.arpa-bboard			Arpanet bulletin boards
					(arpanet-bboards@AI)
	fa.digest-p			For Digest maintainers
	fa.editor-p			Editors (editor-people@su-score)
	fa.human-nets *			Computers in the real world
					(human-nets@AI)
	fa.info-terms			News about terminals (info-terms@MC)
	fa.info-vax			Information on the VAX, mostly VMS
	fa.printers			Printers
	fa.tcp-ip *			TCP & IP protocols (tcp-ip@brl)
	fa.unix-wizards			Unix system gurus mailing list
					(unix-wizards@SRI-UNIX)
	fa.works *			Work station computers (workS@AI)

	pfa.arms-d *			Continuing debate on arms (arms-d@MC)
	pfa.energy *			Various energy topics (energy@MC)
	pfa.info-cpm			The CP/M operating system (info-cpm@AI)
	pfa.info-micro *			Microcomputers (info-micro@AI)
	pfa.poli-sci *			Political science (poli-sci@rutgers)
	pfa.sf-lovers *			For science fiction fans (sf-lovers@AI)
	pfa.space *			The space program (space@mc)
	pfa.telecom *			Telecommunications (telecom@rutgers)
	pfa.unix-cpm			Unix vs. CP/M (unix-cpm@UDEL)

	Mark Horton

Message-ID: <anews.Acbosgd.848>
Newsgroups: net.news
Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!cbosg!cbosgd!mark
X-Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!cbosg!cbosgd!mark
From: cbosgd!mark
Date: Fri Dec 25 19:24:10 1981
Subject: Re:  Proposed USENET policy

It's unfortunate that we can't all be at USENIX to discuss this, but it's
a fact of life and this is the main reason I've been asking for some
discussion HERE.  I have gotten lots of pressure to let the people at
USENIX make the decisions (for the network name, too) and I want to state
for the record that while I fully hope to postpone all such decisions until
at least USENIX, the people who can't make it to Santa Monica this January
have just as much right to be heard as those who can.  Conversely, I feel
that anyone who hasn't joined USENET yet but plans to show up on person has
a lot of nerve trying to mandate the results of the decision.  I want to
hear both groups, but the real public that counts here is the USERS OF THE
NET (e.g. all you folks that are reading this).

Since carrying out a discussion on this medium is very reasonable, but
carrying out a vote is not, I suggest that we all air our opinions here
and that after we talk ourselves out, those who can't make it to USENIX
should find somebody who can and have them cast your vote by proxy.
(Preferably someone you can talk with in person and hand a piece of paper
to with your signature on it.)

	Mark Horton

Message-ID: <anews.Acbosgd.850>
Newsgroups: net.news
Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!eagle!mhtsa!harpo!cbosg!cbosgd!mark
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From: cbosgd!mark
Date: Fri Dec 25 19:31:06 1981
Subject: comments on comments on proposed USENET policy

We are making no attempt to mandate what people can say on USENET,
e.g. censorship.  What we are doing is supporting the rights of the
guy who pays the bills to decide "I only want `business stuff' on my
machine" or "I don't want offensive stuff since I'm worried about
AA/EEO suits".  If two or more sites want to get together and create
other classes of groups which do NOT begin with USENET sanctioned class
names, and want to make sure they don't transmit such classes to other
unsuspecting machines, they can set their own standards.  Note that
net.jokes.q and net.jokes.limericks would have to be moved to such
classes, according to the proposed policy.

As to the formation of the committtee, I don't have any real procedure
for selection of the committee in mind, and if anyone does let's hear
it.  Requirements for being on the committee probably should include
(1) logging in fairly often, since fast response to a proposed new
newsgroup would be nice, and (2) familiarity with the existing newsgroups,
conventions, and hopefully some idea of what's on the ARPANET, so
that if a new newsgroup is proposed which already exists elsewhere,
or with a dumb name, the committee member can propose a more reasonable
solution.  We could make the selection procedure as formal or as informal
as the users want.

	Mark Horton

Message-ID: <anews.Acbosgd.865>
Newsgroups: net.news
Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!cbosg!cbosgd!mark
X-Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!cbosg!cbosgd!mark
From: cbosgd!mark
Date: Sat Dec 26 17:23:58 1981
Subject: USENET committee formation idea

In discussing the committee notion with my in-laws, a similarity was pointed
out to the everyday problem of a child having two bosses (parents) either
of whom can authorize him to do something.  If one says "yes" and the other
says "no", of course the child does it anyway.  The usual parent solution is
to have both parents get together and see if either has an objection (this
is not practical with USENET since the committee might be very distributed)
or if this is not possible, to have policies so that the answer would generally
be the same no matter who made the decision.  The reasons not to have a
single person committee ("dictator") are that no one person should have
total power, and that that one person might go on vacation or otherwise
be out of touch.

Then an interesting suggestion was made.  The committee could have several
members, but only one of them would be "on duty" at any given time.
They could divide up the time to take a week or a month or whatever each.
The person who is "on duty" would be expected to log in often (preferably
at least once a day) and deal with matters such as creation of new newsgroups.
Presumably vacations and such could be scheduled around so that nobody
would take vacation during an "on-duty" time.

	Mark Horton

Message-ID: <anews.Acbosgd.926>
Newsgroups: net.news
Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!cbosg!cbosgd!mark
X-Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!cbosg!cbosgd!mark
From: cbosgd!mark
Date: Sun Dec 27 12:35:07 1981
Subject: Re: proosed newsnet policies

By "cashless" I meant that one machine cannot charge another machine to
send it news.  I would also hope that sites do not add a surcharge for
users to read news, although the normal charging algorithms for real
resources consumed (CPU time, ports, etc) could still be charged for.
In practice, if site A wants B to pay A so that A will send B news,
B can probably find another site C that will send it news for free.

The handshaking protocol is already implemented in B netnews and will
be in the released version in January.  It's optional, in that a given
connection can handshake if it wants to.  The handshaking does not make
sense for many sites that only get news one way anyway.  Since the handshake
slows down the transmission of news (A must call B which calls A back which
calls B back) each site must make the decision separately.  In particular,
for a passive site that is polled once a day, you probably DON'T want to
use this protocol.

	Mark Horton

Message-ID: <anews.Acbosgd.1217>
Newsgroups: net.general
Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!cbosg!cbosgd!mark
X-Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!cbosg!cbosgd!mark
From: cbosgd!mark
Date: Sun Jan  3 17:13:13 1982
Subject: attention: usenet site contacts

It seems to be a common thing for a new site to come up on USENET without
telling anyone they exist.  What happens is that someone hears about
USENET from someone already on the net, who sends them their copy of
whatever code they are running.  I would appreciate it if each site would
take a moment to install the remainder of this message in their netnews
source directory as file README (or appended to any existing README file).
----------------------------------
Sun Jan  3 17:07:13 EST 1982
When you start getting network news, you should announce your existence
to the net by filling out the enclosed form and posting it to the newsgroup
net.general.  (A later convention might make it net.newsite - ask your
contact.)  This form will be used as your entry in the USENET directory.
Note that it is the policy of USENET that all sites receiving public
newsgroups (such as net.all and fa.all) are public in the sense that the
fact they are on USENET is public.  The name and phone number of a contact
person, as well as the name and location of the site, is important.
If you are doing some kind of secret work there is certainly no need to
divulge the nature of your work.  If you feel that you must keep your
existence a secret, you should not be joining USENET.

If you are unclear on this, please give me a call or send me mail:
	Mark Horton
	(614) 860-4276
	ucbvax!mark or mark@berkeley
---------------------------------
Name of site:
What the site is all about:

Name of contact person at site:
Electronic mail address of contact person:
U.S. Mail address of contact person:
Phone number of contact person:

Systems with whom news articles are exchanged:
(what kind of link, who the neighbor(s) are):

Willingness (or lack thereof) to connect to new sites that
want to join usenet.  If you run uucp, tell if new sites can
call you, if you will poll them, what your policy is.
If on the arpanet, are you willing to forward news on to new
sites by establishing an arpanet usenet connection?

If you want to publish your uucp phone number, login, and password,
include that info.

Message-ID: <anews.Acbosgd.1590>
Newsgroups: net.news
Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!mhtsa!eagle!ihnss!cbosg!cbosgd!mark
X-Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!mhtsa!eagle!ihnss!cbosg!cbosgd!mark
From: cbosgd!mark
Date: Mon Jan 11 13:05:33 1982
Subject: USENET policies

Well, the storm has died down somewhat and the following conclusions
seem to represent the majority of the members:

Basically, the proposed policy seems for the most part agreeable to
most of the net, except as mentioned here.

A rewording of the cost policy is needed to permit several sites to
share the cost of a link over which news is sent.

The policies on creation of new newsgroups seem way off base and should
probably be junked.  A procedure for creation of a new newsgroup, probably
only slightly more formal than what currently happens, should be
established and documented.

Everybody agrees that net.jokes.q should go away, at least officially.
I suggest that it be renamed something like ug.jokes (where ug is an
"underground" class that only sites that really want it would subscribe).

Nobody has really said anything about the net/pers distinction.  While
it seems like a good idea to me, unless there are people out there who
would make use of the distinction, there doesn't seem to be any point
in splitting the current newsgroups.

	Mark

			  SCO's Case Against IBM

November 12, 2003 - Jed Boal from Eyewitness News KSL 5 TV provides an
overview on SCO's case against IBM. Darl McBride, SCO's president and CEO,
talks about the lawsuit's impact and attacks. Jason Holt, student and 
Linux user, talks about the benefits of code availability and the merits 
of the SCO vs IBM lawsuit. See SCO vs IBM.

Note: The materials and information included in these Web pages are not to
be used for any other purpose other than private study, research, review
or criticism.