Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: C news compatibility (was Re: Patch dates or Patch Numbers)
Message-ID: <1989Aug19.225027.24194@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1989Aug9.164003.20669@utzoo.uucp> <6717@dayton.UUCP> <1989Aug19.004434.29961@utstat.uucp> <64167@uunet.UU.NET>
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 89 22:50:27 GMT

In article <64167@uunet.UU.NET> rick@uunet.UU.NET (Rick Adams) writes:
>Something is backwards compatible when you can replace an older system
>with it and things keep running.

Quite a few older systems have been replaced by C News, and Usenet is
still running fine.  When people replace B2.nn with C News, their news
readers keep running.  (In fact, utzoo ran B New's readnews until about
a year ago.)  Sounds backwards compatible to me.

>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.

Of course, when one replaced the B2.10.1 executables with B2.11 ones,
duplicate-article rejection broke until all the old entries got expired
out of the history file, because of the change to message-id case policy.
That being a rather serious matter for many sites, clearly B2.11 was not
backwards compatible with B2.10.1, by your reasoning.  (*Why* it was
done is irrelevant, by your own definition.)

>Messageids are case independant. Period. You intentionally ignore it
>with some sleazy rationalization about its not being in the RFC.

We ignore it because the specifications say it's not true.  The matter
very definitely is in RFC822.  RFC1036 says 822 dominates in the event
of dispute, and on this issue there isn't even a dispute, since 1036 is
silent on the matter.

(Actually, we agree that the wording about 822 dominating needs to be
revised, since taken literally it invalidates most of 1036, but here
there can be little doubt about what the current specs say.)

>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.

No argument.  However, it begs the question:  what's right?  Dennis
Ritchie considers C bitfields "a botch and a blemish" (his exact words),
but I trust you would not buy a C compiler that therefore left them out.
Dennis no longer sets the standard for C; B2.11 and its maintainer no
longer set the standard for news.  In both cases, the standard is set
by a consensus document, not by a man ("government of laws, not men").
When the documents are wrong, eventually they get revised, but until
then, they are the best standard we've got and the proper basis for
a new implementation.
-- 
V7 /bin/mail source: 554 lines.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1989 X.400 specs: 2200+ pages. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu