Origins of DATE command

[Brian Kantor]

The DATE command is implemented in all current versions of NNTP servers
that I'm aware of.

The history of it is this: we discovered soon after we added the NEWNEWS
command that clients in other timezones or on stupid machines like Macs
and PCs [remember that the original PC didn't have a clock in it] needed
some way to get the time of day as evaluated by the server.  So we added
the DATE command.

In the arguments over the NNTPv2 spec, one of the concerns was that
clients would use the DATE command as a remote time clock, and beat
the NNTP server to death asking about the time of day.  [In today's
light, what with hardware clocks in nearly everything, and the NTP
to keep it all sync'd, that seems silly.  But it wasn't then.]

Some wanted to omit the DATE command entirely for that reason, and it
was omitted from the v2 draft for many revisions.

What we agreed to do - though it never made it to hard copy - was to
add a command (never named) which would represent a 'magic cookie'
that could be fed to the NEWNEWS command just as the ISO date is in
the v1 implementation.  It was to be a server-dependent item; you would
request it and save it and return it, but you didn't interpret it.
Whether it was an ISO format timestamp, an encrypted version of it,
an offset into the history file, or whatever, wasn't important.  It
was to be documented as "not dependably the time of day" so that
clients wouldn't use it as a clock.

Hope that perspective helps a bit.
	- Brian

PS: two things to keep in mind:

1) the v1 spec was written BEFORE implementation, so it does not
represent what the actual usage of the protocol is.  That was done
because, back in those days, in order to get a reservered TCP port, you
had to have an RFC.  We thought we needed a reserved port in order to
develop things.  Probably better that we did, since ad-hoc port
assignments tend to live forever.  I argued that it should never be made
a standards document because it was incorrect from GO, but hey, the
network politicos needed a standard and accuracy was the loser.  Thus
the crying need for Stan's how-it-really-works document and suchlike.

2) the v2 spec as it stands is, as far as I know, the draft brought to
one of the various working committee meetings for discussions.  Each such
meeting resulted in copious notes on what should be changed, many of
which items were to go into an NNRP protocol draft that, to my
knowledge, was never written.  Nor were many of the changes that were
discussed ever re-incorporated into the draft.  Simply, we all just got
too busy doing the things they paid us for, and NNTPv2 fell by the
wayside.  Sorry about that.