Request for help: electronic submission of SPRs

[Bruce G. Barnett]

In article <468 at granite.dec.com>, rwood at vajra (Richard Wood) writes:

> -  The information transfered cannot go via normal UUCP channels for
>    two reasons:  security - many of the uucp connections go via our
>    competitors and we would probably hesitate to discuss problems and
>    bugs where they could easily watch every word;  and appropriateness

Uh. So USENET is more secure? :-)
Seriously, if someone found a bug that is significant (like the bug in
ed(1) I discovered while installing USENET), I think it is to everyone's
advantage to make this problem known ASAP.

Other problems, (i.e. security ), should be kept off the network, of
course.

But I don't really understand the reluctance by DEC to discuss (or
acknowledge) these problems publicly. Yes, I can understand a company's
reluctance to admit a stupid mistake. But this will NEVER keep it
quiet. Sun, for instance, has made several stupid MAJOR mistakes.
Look at the infamous leap year bug. If DEC made a mistake
like this, or left a LARGE hole in their operating system,
they should publicize the fix - or how to get the fix, ASAP.

Face it. You can't hide serious problems.

And if Sun, HP/Apollo, or IBM did find out about a bug in Ultrix, so
what? What are they going to to besides snicker the same way DEC does
when they find out about something stupid in their competitor's
system?

Obviously, it would not be a good idea to discuss future products
over E-mail, unless your customer had a direct link (UUCP) to
a DEC site.

But if there is a bug that a lot of people are going to find,
DEC should make people aware of these bugs so they don't have to
spend a day determining what the problem is.

Listen! I would LOVE to get patches to Ultrix via FTP.

>    - the UUCP network isn't there for commercial purposes, and some
>    people would probably find DEC's commercial use of it objectionable.

Then use the biz.* distribution available from UUNET!
If people want it, they can get it. If they don't want it -no problem!

>    Digital would probably not want to have business dependencies on a
>    network as chaotic and anarchistic as the UUCP.

Not UUNET!

And if a site doesn't have a connection to uunet, then can
	a) get one - and just get the biz.ultrix feed

	IT'S CHEAPER THAN SOFTWARE SUPPORT!

	b) get biz.ultrix from another site for free. There might be a few
	   systems out there that are interested :-)


> -  Bi-directional:  While getting information to Digital is probably
>    fairly simple, how does Digital respond?  Keep in mind that many
>    companies refuse to allow people to dial into their systems
>    willy-nilly.

That's what software is for. If you write willy-nilly software...

I would rather write bug reports electronically
than on paper. I must have reported 50 bugs in SunOS 4.0,
and in many cases - I got a response back in 24 hours.
(O.K. In a lot of cases is was "Known bug #6012" or whatever.
But at least I know they got my message!)

If I had to write up those reports on paper, instead of using script(1),
I would not have reported nearly as many.

Sun may have it's problems in the support arena, but in some ways they
are more innovative . Better wake up!

--
Bruce G. Barnett	<barnett at crdgw1.ge.com>  a.k.a. <barnett@[192.35.44.4]>
			uunet!steinmetz!barnett, <barnett at steinmetz.ge.com>