🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <15781@bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes:
   In article <BOB.90Aug22102618@volitans.MorningStar.Com> bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) writes:
      A mail-based archive server is an impolite and destructive way
      to distribute large amounts of information, and should be
      discouraged in such applications.

   ...a MBAS is *potentially* destructive ... This gloomy potential
   need not be realized.

Let's hope not!  A lot of people find them very useful.

   Responsible archive servers will establish and enforce limits ...
   how much a given reply path can tolerate...

How might the responsible archivist establish those limits?  How is
the archivist to know how much additional traffic a remote
nonzero-incremental-cost mail connection might tolerate?  Them's heavy
heuristics, son, and requires a lot of communication between the
archivist and all the administrators of all the nodes along the path.

Perhaps a new Pathalias field, along with link cost, describing how
benevolent the site can be to strangers?
	foobar(NIGHTLY,REAL_NICE)

However, if each node must give explicit permission for the use of
their piece of the path, I suspect that they won't.  If the "public
service" traffic isn't explicitly authorized, it passes by the
beancounters without such a ripple.

    * In the most general sense of the term, a mail based archive
   server is any server that accepts requests via mail.  The actions
   taken to satisfy those requests need not be limited to mailing file
   contents back along the reply path.

Good point, I've played with shell scripts that invoked whois, finger,
etc. in response to uux or mail requests.  But my use of "mail based"
meant that the response's transport mechanism is usually mail.

     - [A MBAS] might respond to a mailed request by placing the file
   in an anonymous UUCP download directory, and mailing back L.sys and
   filename information to the user.

This is the best suggestion yet:  Let the MBAS initiate the FTP in
response to a mailed request, then prepare for the UUCP (or whatever)
transfer.  Presumably, after the file is copied via whatever other
pay-per-use means, its storage would be reaped.

But is the FTP traffic then really for an authorized Internet user?
If the transfer was automatically initiated on behalf of someone who's
not connected, what is the legal status of the resultant traffic?  Who
wants to ask?

   Since the MBAS genie is not going to go quietly back into its
   bottle, it would be more constructive to suggest responsible
   strategies for running them -- and provide software to implement
   those strategies -- than to inveigh against the entire phenomenon.

Indeed so!  And that's the sort of discussion I hoped to start.  Let's
find a way to help people be responsible with other people's
resources.  You've suggested a couple of good starters.