ietf-nntp NEWGROUPS and NEWNEWS

[Jeff Macdonald]

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Hi,
The last line for the date specification for these commands just doesn't
make sense:

		  The date is sent as 6 or 8 digits in the format [XX]YYMMDD,
            where XX is the first two digits of the year, YY is the last
            two digits of the year, MM is the two digits of the month
            (with leading zero, if appropriate), and DD is the day of the
            month (with leading zero, if appropriate). If the first two
            digits of the year are not specified, the year is taken to be
            in the range 1951 to 2050 inclusive.

If YY is 30, this would mean 2030. I know that the software didn't exist yet, 
but wouldn't it make more sense for it to mean 1930? 2030 would only make 
sense if the current year was 2030 or later. 

So I propose the last line to be:

	 
	If the first two digits of the year are not specified, the year is to be
	taken from the current century if YY is smaller than or equal to the
	current year, otherwise the year is from the previous century.

This would mean that in 1998, a 30 is 1930, 00 is 1900,  and 99 is 1899.
In 2030, 30 is 2030, 00 is 2000, and 99 is 1999. In 3098, a 30 is 3030, 
00 is 3000, and 99 is 2099.

I've seen some postings on DejaNews that seems to indicate this is how
current servers actually interpret the date. For instance, using 00 for a date
resulted in all the groups being returned (ie the date was transformed to
1900).
Although this doesn't follow the spec, it makes sense, since 2000 would have
resulted in no data being returned, and clearly we are not in the year 2000
yet.


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