From: royce@splunge.uucp
Subject: Re: Holiday NeXT Sale!!
Organization: Ashley, Howland & Wood
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 02:26:08 GMT

nathan@laplace.csb.yale.edu (Nathan F. Janette) writes:

>In article <1992Dec31.074242.11117@crl.com> smg@orb.com (Samuel M.  
>Goldberger) writes:

>> To resolve this matter, henceforth I shall post brief
>> notes here, with pointers   to the exiting
>> biz.next.newproducts group, together with an
>> invitation to send   email for more complete information.
>> 
>> I've enjoyed this discussion, and have been gratified by
>> the expressions of   support, but I think an equable
>> solution is at hand. Does this make sense?

>Sounds reasonable to me.  Should we use just
>biz.next.newprod, or should we go ahead with a call for
>discussion for the creation of biz.next.marketplace?  I
>think many vendors would use such a group,
>especially if pointers to it where in the FAQ and
>posted in this group on a regular basis. 

I'm having a little trouble, so if some of the following text made it
out once already, my apologies.

I figure, if we're going to move these sorts of posts somewhere else,
let's move them somewhere that makes the best sense.  Moving posts
about commercial sale of new and used hardware and software into a group
called "...newprod" doesn't seem like as good a fit or something called
"...marketplace".  Then again, my feed doesn't carry the biz.* hierarchy,
so I don't know what the biz.next.newprod charter covers.

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing all the way, IMHO.  And, yes, I
do think it's worth doing.  By way of explaining why, for those who
still don't know why we should worry about this stuff, an excerpt from
the Febuary '92 NSFNET acceptable use document, as quoted by Ed Krol's
book "The Whole Internet".  NSFNET is one of the main US Internet backbones.

"General Principle:
- NSFNET Backbone services are provided to support open research and
  education in and among U.S. research and instructional institutions,
  plus research arms of for-profit firms when engaged in open scholarly
  communication and research.  Use for other purposes is not acceptable.

Specifically Acceptable Uses:
[...statements regarding academic, research and government uses...]

Unacceptable Uses:
- Use for for-profit activities (consulting for pay, sales or administration
  of campus stores, sale of tickets to sports events, and so on) or use by
  for-profit institutions unless covered by the General Principle or as a
  specifically acceptable use.
- Extensive use for private or personal business.

This statement applies to use of the NSFNET Backbone only.  NSF expects
that connecting networks will formulate their own use policies.  The NSF
Division of networking and Communications Research and Infrastructure
will resolve any questions about this policy or its interpretation."

This document is available via anonymous ftp from nic.merit.edu as
/nsfnet/acceptable.use.policies/nsfnet.txt.  It explains why the issue
here is not whether NeXT and its customers need all the help they can
get (we do, who doesn't?), or whether Sam and others are nice guys who
are offering valuable information (they are, mostly), but that the people
who pay money to establish the Internet infrastructure we're using (many
of us for free) have defined parameters of use, a major one of which is
commercial-oriented traffic created by/for for-profit organizations.

If we don't ourselves regulate this sort of traffic in line with network
providers' acceptable use policies, they may decide to regulate it for us.

Sorry to go on at such length, especially when some people (including Sam)
have already agreed that the move to biz.* is okay, and others have said
"shut up" or "get out of this group", but it seemed important to post these
things to help bring proper closure to this discussion, and it seemed
expedient to do it here to catch those who have been following the thread.

-- 
Royce Howland, DKW Systems Corp.   |  "And since OS/2 2.0 is a 32-bit
       Everything is IMHO          |   operating system, programs are easier
royce@splunge.uucp  (NeXTMail OK)  |   to write and run faster, too."
or kakwa!atlantis!splunge!royce    |  ad for OS/2 2.0
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.marketplace