ietf-nntp "Common NNTP Extensions" document updated

Jon Ribbens jon at oaktree.co.uk
Mon Dec 1 09:58:52 PST 1997


Vincent Archer <Vincent.Archer at hsc.fr> wrote:
> > These two are the same thing. If the command is not a MUST part of the
> > protocol, then client software cannot rely on its existence. This isn't
> 
> Right now, no client software can rely on its existence. Saying "It is
> mandated!" will not result in those servers magically implementing
> NEWNEWS, since the current document define it as mandatory, and
> quite obviously, many sites don't allow it.

No, but if the RFC gives up on it then it'll never get implemented
in the servers.

> > And I say again: NEWNEWS exists and is in widespread use today. Fixing
> 
> Define "widespread". In the world I live in, 100% of the servers I can
> contact and read from (and that's more than a dozen) reply me:
> 
> 502 NEWNEWS command disabled by administrator

<shrug> 100% of the news servers I have access to allow NEWNEWS. I don't
have access to as many as a dozen though ;-).

> I'm sure that there are part of the world where you can get a reply out
> of a NEWNEWS. But how many servers out there are running INN?

A vast majority. That's irrelevent though. The server running locally
is running INN, and it allows NEWNEWS. "Server X runs INN" does not
imply "Server X does not allow NEWNEWS".

> Your biggest worry seems to be that, once the NEWNEWS is no longer
> mandatory, your servers will stop implementing it - to which I'll
> reply that XOVER has never been mandatory, which hasn't stopped more
> and more servers from implementing it :)

Because they can't get away without implementing it.

> Mine is that, once developpers start removing mandatory parts (NEWNEWS)
> of the protocol from their server, they'll start to think it's equally
> uncorrect to remove other, maybe more useful parts, from the protocol.

But it's perfectly alright for *us* to remove mandatory parts of the
protocol?

Cheers


Jon
____
\  //    Jon Ribbens    // 100MB virtual-hosted // www.oaktree.co.uk
 \// jon at oaktree.co.uk //  web space for 99UKP //



More information about the ietf-nntp mailing list