Adecvax.191 net.followup utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!aps Tue Mar 23 20:39:51 1982 USENIX and /usr/group Bob Rosin, I should point out that in your situation (SHARE and GUIDE), you were both using the same machines, probably the same "monitors" and compilers, and had dealings with the same, and only vendor. With USENIX and /usr/group, this is certainly not the case. In light of the growing popularity of UNIX, I believe that there is a need to clearly define the goals of each of the two major UNIX user organizations. It is not clear to me what the current distinctions between the two groups are. I can say that one of them, USENIX, is an organization consisting to a larger extent of people who are more involved with research (computer science in particular), maintaining a UNIX site that is source licensed and does not depend upon the growing number of UNIX OEM's for support, and networking (which probably also comes under comp-sci research). /usr/group is made up of people who are more of an "end user" type than a comp-sci type. These people are probably more interested in what office products they can buy, what will be in the next release from Microsoft, the desire to beat up on Interactive Systems for something called uucp so they can talk to non-IS/1 systems, and binary licensing issues, and so on. This is not to say that /usr/group members are not interested in things that USENIX members are, but that the intersection is probably small and probably not large enough to justify the trouble that would be required to "merge" the two groups or to continue to have co-meetings. With a definition of goals, each group could "carve out" the area that have the greatest impact on its goals and bring its own specialized set of resources to bare on these particular problems. One of the major differences between the two groups (already mentioned above) is the fact that a majority of the members of USENIX have source licenses and, if I were to venture a guess, the majority of the members of /usr/group get their UNIX (like) systems from an OEM/vendor and as such, have binary only licenses. This can cause (and is currently causing) problems in the area of software redistribution on "conference" tapes. One of the problems that /usr/group could solve for its members is the availability of a sanitized distribution tape. (I will open myself up at this point, but what the hell!) It is not clear to me that a governing body of vendors would necessarily want to distribute software for free that may compete with some of their own products. But that is not the discussion at hand. (Working for such a vendor, I know from where I speak.) You suggest that a single "COHERENT" (no pun intended, I assume) view for the UNIX system vendor representing the concerns of the two groups be prepared. I will go out on a limb and say that the two groups each deal with a different set of and type of vendors. On the one hand, you have Interactive Systems, Whitesmith`s, Fortune (sorry Dave), Perkin-Elmer (not DEC, at least not for the software) and Microsoft, to mention a few. On the other hand, you have AT&T (a.k.a. TPC, Ma Bell (and child)). How one deals with these two sets, and what one can expect from the two sets are completely different. This leads me to wonder about coherent views. I guess, the bottom line for me, is that I am not willing to sacrifice slightly manageable meetings or higher membership/conference fees for "VERY large meetings" along with a larger layout of money, just for the sake of sharing meetings with another group whose goal/direction is completely different from the group that I think I am a part of, just because we use the same systems upon which theirs are based. I do, however, encourage that "leadership" from both organizations get together and work some sort of interface out. But before they propose a shared meeting again, I hope they consider RS-232-C. Armando Stettner [P.S. Peter, I hope you didn't have to sound out anything aps. (sick)] ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.