Request for help: electronic submission of SPRs

[Richard Wood]

I've been thinking about this for a long time now, and the recent
conversations in this newsgroup have prompted me to make a request.

How would you like to see electronic communications regarding bugs to
work?

Keep in mind the following points:

 -  Digital is probably second only to the US government in it's
    attractiveness to people attempting to break into networks, and thus
    is rightly paranoid about connecting to external networks.

 -  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
    - the UUCP network isn't there for commercial purposes, and some
    people would probably find DEC's commercial use of it objectionable.
    Digital would probably not want to have business dependencies on a
    network as chaotic and anarchistic as the UUCP.

 -  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.

 -  Asynchronous discussions:  We currently send a hardcopy update once
    a quarter to point out potential problems that some customers might
    not have run into.  Should this be electronic?  How does the data
    get transfered, and of what types?

 -  Interactivity:  Should a support network be set up along official
    lines, so that customers can share and discuss problems (much as is
    done here in comp.unix.ultrix) with other supported customers and
    Digital engineers?  How is this to be controlled?

 -  Local control:  In many customer situations, support is funneled
    through one or a limited number of channels, such as the system
    management staff.  How can this be arranged to keep these people
    firmly in control of what is submitted?


No promises - however, many of us here at Digital (hi, Fred!) share the
desire to take advantage of electronic communications for this purpose -
The irony of the company with the worlds largest private network
(somewhere over 25,000 computers) still shuffling paper around is not
lost on us.  We'll see if we can find a better way of doing business.


In addition to discussing in this newsgroup, please send any ideas or
recommendations to me directly at rwood at dec.com, or if that doesn't
work, rwood at decwrl.dec.com.  Thanks.

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Does it need saying that I'm not speaking as an official representative of DEC?
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Richard Wood  !  U. S. Worksystems, Palo Alto  !  Digital Equipment Corporation