🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi folks.  I'm glad to see that other people are looking into an all
SMTP/MIME-based solution to inter-platform (PC, MAC, UNIX, other)
enterprise-wide mail.  We've constructed a gateway'd cc:mail, microsoft
mail, unix mail, vms mail (and even profs) system with Alisa mail
PMDF and All-in-1 as the mail gateways.  Even if it worked, it would
be broken.  If you've tried to construct a similar system, you'll know
what I mean.

For my money, any gateway'd system is defective at inception.  Even if
mail flows smoothly through the gateways, you can't share other
resources, such as displays or file systems.  Imagine, on the other
hand, if every machine (PC, MAC, UNIX, other) shared some common set
of protocols for network communications, mail, displays; they could
keep to their proprietary protocols when communicating between similar
machines, but when it came time to do something "enterprise-wide,"
wouldn't it be good if they all spoke the same language?  I think so.

Theoretically, you could pick from a number of sets of protocols.  
At UTRC, we're staging a demonstration with:

  - Internet Protocols and
  - SMTP / MIME
  - X Windows
  - NFS (to an extent)
  - nntp news clients (of course)
  - DNS (for hosts)
  ..and we're planning to try integrating ISODE X.500 into one or
    two applications to see how it goes (if anyone can get all the
    way through the documentation... zzzzz)

Who else has tried gluing their enterprise together this way, and how
did it go?  My guess is that a number of people would like to know.
(We're all being dragged off into the woods by proprietary enterprise
solutions.)  Post your 2 cents or send me some return mail, and I'll
summarize the results for the group.

-Kevin
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     Kevin Dowd, consultant at United Technologies Research Center
     Say whatever you want about me. Just spell my name right. 
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