Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!rick From: rick@uunet.UU.NET (Rick Adams) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: C news compatibility (was Re: Patch dates or Patch Numbers) Message-ID: <64167@uunet.UU.NET> Date: 19 Aug 89 04:12:12 GMT References: <1989Aug9.164003.20669@utzoo.uucp> <6717@dayton.UUCP> <1989Aug19.004434.29961@utstat.uucp> Organization: UUNET Communications Services, Falls Church, VA Lines: 124 Summary: reaching In article <1989Aug19.004434.29961@utstat.uucp>, geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer) writes: > Rick Adams: > > (The rfc is 4 years old and out of date.) > > My copy of RFC 1036 is dated December 1987, so I make it 1.67 years old. However, the text of the rfc was frozen and sent to Postel the summer of 1986. It took him well over a year to "release" is as an RFC. This is also why no on has bothered to do an update. The text of the RFC is basically 1985 with minor changes in early 1986. (SCCS logs support this.) If I buy a copy of Robinson Crusoe that has a 1985 printing date on it, I dont claim the book is only 4 years old. The date on the RFC is the printing date, not the date of the information. > > > Where the RFC and Bnews differ the behavior of Bnews should generall be > > considered correct. > > Henry and I do not buy this argument. The behaviour of B news does not > make a de facto standard. WRONG. Pull your dictionary out again. Something is a de facto standard when the vast majority of sites comply with it. Since the vast majority of sites run Bnews, they can be said to comply with it. You are thinking of de jure standard, which is is not. > > > To me (and just about everyone else) backwards compatible means behaves > > the same as Bnews. > > Perhaps we are not speaking the same language. My OED says > ``compatible a. Consistent, able to coexist, (with); mutually > tolerant; (of equipment etc.) able to be used in combination''. I > don't see any meaning which implies cloning. C news is not a clone of > B news. People who want a clone should get B news; it's a clone of B > news. Who cares about the definition of compatible. What does the OED say about backwards compatible. Something is backwards compatible when you can replace an older system with it and things keep running. If you could remove all of the Bnews executables and replace them with Cnews and the system kept running, then it would be backwards compatible. Clearly you can not do that. Therefore, clearly it is not backwards compatible. > > > your wrote something compatilble with the the RFC, so your have developed > > a new transport. It is not backwards compatible with Bnews. > > And where is C news incompatible with the message format of B news? > Our users seem to be exchanging news with B news sites just fine. No one is arguing about the message format. Notes files exchange articles with Bnews sites too. Would you claim they are backwards compatible. The notes people wouldn't. They also wouldn't care. > > > You are doing everyone a great disservice claiming that it is > > backwards compatible. Anyone who has tried to use Cnews will tell > > you that it is not. > > We have had letters from many satisfied users of C news; no one (other > than you) who has actually used C news claims that it is incompatible > with B news. Ask them. EVERYONE I have talked to has said it is not backwards compatible. God, look at all the patches for nntp compatibility, etc. Interoperable hsa nothing to do with backwards compatibility. > > Cnews chose to have serveral incompatible (and wrong in my opinion) > > differences with Bnews. Messageids are case independant. Period. You intentionally ignore it with some sleazy rationalization about its not being in the RFC. The RFC is wrong. My name is on the RFC. I think that lets me say with some authority whether the RFC is wrong or not. > Again, what are they? We haven't seen them. > > > If you were concerned about backwards compatibility, then you would have > > paid attention to current behavior of the commonly used program > > that defines the behavior that everyone expects. > > We have no interoperability problems. Damn it, try having the same conversation as I do. No one has said it does not interoperate. It does. So does Notes. However Cnews is not backwards compatible with Bnews. Interoperability has nothing to do with backwards compatibility. > > > Fletcher Mattox: > > If C news is backward compatible with B news, then why do I have to > > have to modify NNTP to work with C news? > > In general, you don't have to; you can continue to suffer horrible > performance. The two things you do need to compensate for are that B > news changed its mind about case sensitivity of Message-IDs and C news > uses the B 2.10.1 interpretation (case insensitive), and that NNTP > relies on an implementation detail, the format of the second field of > the history file (which B news changed its mind about; NNTP wants the B > 2.11 format), so we provide a minor change to nntp/server/newnews.c to > understand the C news format. Jesus. Would you drop your damned "bnews sucks" campaign. Bnews fixed a bug in the early code that didnt ignore case. it didn't "change its mind" B 2.10.1 is BROKEN. Basing Cnews on 5 or 6 year old code was just plain stupid. Would you write a unix and base it on Version 7 and claim it was backwards compatible with System 5? Of course not, people would laugh at you. This situation is similar. Your last sentence says it all. Backwards compatible programs DO pay attention to implementation details. Thats what backwards compatible means. Why dont you just admit that you did a better, but non-backwards compatible implementation? There is nothing wrong with that. --rick