From: peter@global.hacktic.nl (Peter Busser)
Newsgroups: alt.bbs
Subject: Re: BBS Standards Committ
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 92 12:23:27 GMT
Organization: Global Village 1

cblaise@moose.uvm.edu.UUCP (Chris Blaise) writes:

>From article <2477@aegis.or.jp>, by davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane):
>	*chuckle*  Depends on what suits you!  I find negotiating
>menus the *easiest* way to work with BBSes.  However, there are programs
>that I could use on TBBS (or heck, make my own) that would give it the
>"shell" feel of unix.  The trouble is that most of our callers barely have
>a clue of what DOS is, let alone Unix.  I don't see where requiring them
>to remember "vn -n Vermont-EdNet.Educator.Student" is really helping
>to accomplish what the main mission of the system is - that is to get
>teachers and educators experienced with telecommunications.
You don't have to use a command line under UNIX, the point is that you can have
BOTH command line AND menus. In fact, you can have several different command
lines and several different menu types. A UNIX system can do anything TBBS can,
but not vise versa.

>> I see. Well, you might think about saying that instead of "It simply
>> doesn't interest me.  You might as well be telling..."

>	But that's how I feel!  *grin*  There is no amount of convincing
>that can be done on my to make me feel that a change from TBBS to a Unix
>system would be better for me to run and for my users to use, than I
>could convince YOU and others otherwise about TBBS over Unix.
Well, the last is difficult. You see, TBBS has no functionality that UNIX can't
have. So UNIX may not be better (whatever that means) but it can do whatever
*you* want. TBBS can't do whatever *I* want. And there is the great difference
in price. One can have a UNIX clone for the 386 for free whereas TBBS costs
$$$$.

> 1) I'm a student.  I have very little time to maintain a unix machine to
>    get it to do what *I* would want it to do.
Linux, a free 386 UNIX clone, has only a dozen or so configuration files.

>    another 6-7 unix machines.  Do we really need to offer YAUM (Yet Another
>    Unix Machine)?
Why YADM (Yet Another Different Machine)?

> 3) The people this BBS targets are NOT computer literate.
Well, they don't have to use sh, csh, ksh, bash or any *sh command line shell.
You can provide them with a BBS shell with menus, hotkeys, etc. Heck, in our
province, we have UNIX computers in public libraries. How much UNIX knowledge
do you think librarians have? I can assure you: NONE at all. And how much UNIX
knowledge has the public? NONE at all. They get nice pull-down menu's, helptext
and everything on their terminals. So I wonder about why you think that UNIX
can't be user freindly.

>  We're trying to get them to USE telecommunications.
What's the difference between USING telecommunications on UNIX or USING tele-
communications on TBBS?

>  These people have enough trouble
>    understanding the concepts of uploading and downloading, let alone
>    the various intricies of unix.    
They don't have to, but if they want, they can (if you permit that of course).

> 4) My project is a *multi line BBS*, not a *multi line OS*.
You lose 1 point here, because TBBS does what a normal OS is supposed to do.
The reason TBBS does that is that MooSe-DOS can't do it so it HAS to.

> Do I think that TBBS can compete with
>    unix?  Of course not.  Do I think it can compare with most of the
>    BBS packages I see on it?  Sure I do.  It has it's points as well as
>    those packages have their own.  The point is, lets stick to the
>    BBS debates and not the OS debates.
That's impossible, because TBBS is an OS of itself. A UNIX BBS has no
multi-user capabilities, that is what the UNIX system has. TBBS has multi-user
capabilities because MooSe-DOS hasn't. So you can't separate the BBS from the
system it runs on.

Greetings,
Peter Busser
Newsgroups: alt.bbs