REMOVED::ANN: yahMAIL is dead - long live son of yahMAIL!

[John Gillings]

Mark,

I don't think the comparison with the Availability Manager announcement is quite valid, but I take the point.

Personally I didn't think your announcement was in breach of any policies. I was even tempted to download it and check it out myself. Please send me copies of all your correspondence, and I'll try to get a more detailed explanation of the ruling for you.

I believe HP should be ENCOURAGING people to create and distribute products that enhance HP products. Perhaps a solution would be to create a category for non-commercial announcements? Those that don't want to read quasi advertising material can simply avoid that category.

[Mark Daniel_2]

Hi John.

At the risk of cheekily tempting the Fates again please find included the original announcement (the only other correspondence to me has been the form-letter email included at the top of this thread). Many thanks for trying to discover whether this was a simple mistake that easily could have been corrected or counter-productive company policy enforced by ITRC militia. I was beginning to think HP (and I know you are not 'it' ... but better than ;-) was ignoring this. It's a carbon-copy of the announcement made concurrently on c.o.v. and that Alex has generously provided us with a pathway to

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.vms/browse_thread/thread/6787efceeee4020f/e594502ae3452334?q=soymail&rnum=1#e594502ae3452334

I am baffled how anyone, not stalled between Freud's ages of two and four years, could take offence at what was obviously an attempt at humorous play when trying to generate a handle for some new software. Even more than twenty-four months after coming up with the name soyMAIL I still smile (which is perhaps more of an insight than I should be providing). When explaining it to my daughter living in New Zealand she took a second to register and then burst out laughing saying it was 'typical'. Perhaps that wasn't a compliment after-all ;-) Perhaps it should have been left at /cgi-bin/yahmail2 or or /cgi-bin/yahmailii or (just to make it interesting for our Apache brethren) /cgi-bin/yahmailII.

Of course, thanks for your time, and to all those here and on c.o.v. who have also remarked they found the removal suprising.

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Subject: "ANN: yahMAIL is dead - long live son of yahMAIL!"

The sometime refered to, long awaited (by some), much anticipated (again, by some), twelve months in the making, successor to yahMAIL - son of yahMAIL - is now available for (BETA) download

http://wasd.vsm.com.au/wasd/

It supports Apache, OSU and WASD on all VMS platforms and versions from V6.0.

Note that this is a *BETA* release - so be careful with it!

Obviously don't bet the company on it. I have been using this for my personal email ever since it became somewhat usable (~four months ago) and it seems pretty stable. Of course that's one of the purposes of BETA testing, to get it off your test-bench and away from your own patterns of usage. A small band of hardy BETA-testers have already got their hands on this and reported issues that have been fixed and made function suggestions. Be gentle with your comments and wish-list items - you don't want to discourage me too vigorously so early in this phase!

If you're going to create a specific language or help file(s) then note that although the contents are fairly stable, as it's a BETA release it may need revision in the not too distant future.

Here's some more information:

Overview:
http://wasd.vsm.com.au/soymail/-/doc/soymail_overview.pdf
http://wasd.vsm.com.au/soymail/-/doc/soymail_overview.html
Install and Admin:
http://wasd.vsm.com.au/soymail/-/doc/soymail_admin.pdf
http://wasd.vsm.com.au/soymail/-/doc/soymail_admin.html
On-line user Help:
http://wasd.vsm.com.au/cgi-bin/soymail?help

If you're going to email me privately then include "soyMAIL" in the subject line so that if you end up quarantined by anti-SPAM you can be relatively easily identified.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Mark Daniel http://wasd.vsm.com.au/adelaide
mailto:Mark.Daniel@wasd.vsm.com.au (Mark.Daniel@dsto.defence.gov.au)
A pox on the houses of all SPAMers. Make that two poxes.
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[Phillip Thayer]

I think that not encouraging the creation of software for OpenVMS by non-owners (DEC/Compaq/HP) is most likely a main reason that OpenVMS is not as widely used as it is now.

Look at Windows. The strength of Windows is not the technical ability of the operating system but rather the market recoignizability of the OS and the avaliability of software to perform just about anything a person would want to do with the OS. Part of the reason that this is so is because of the Microsoft Partners program that was started back in the early 1990's. This program not only encouraged non-owners of the OS to develop commercially viable software it assisted them in the developement and marketing of the software through Microsoft themselves. Many of the software packages that are currently used in Windows were originally written by Microsoft Partners who are now very rich and have been integrated into the Microsoft organization.

Along the same lines, if DEC/Compac/HP did something similar and ASSISTED the writers of the software then maybe OpenVMS would be a more publiclly recognizable OS. As it stands now, when I talk to another IT professional and tell them my speciality is OpenVMS, 75% of them have no clue what it is. I simply tell them that it is the midrange OS that MW Windows NT based systems was cloned from :) and they kind of look at me with this surprised look. It opens up a lot of intersting conversations. You whould try it sometime. :)

Phil

[Mark Daniel_2]

Apparently "no correspondence will be entered into".