ietf-nntp RFC977bis w.r.t. authentication

[Chris Lewis]

Brian Kantor wrote:
> My claim is that AUTHINFO is a non-standard addition to the protocol,
> since each of the various implementations does it differently.

I don't think this is true at all.

Both the Microsoft and Netscape appear to do AUTHINFO GENERIC
exactly the same way.[*]

Both INN 1.5+ and NNTP 1.5.12 (reference implementation) do
AUTHINFO GENERIC in the same way, except that they don't
return a list of authenticators if no authenticator is
specified.  I'll supply the fixes to ISC (and whomever
owns 1.5.12 these days) once I find out what the spec for
the "list of authenticators" return is.

All four of the above servers to AUTHINFO USER/PASS in the same
way.[*]

[*] With the possible exception of the changes to the return codes
that Stan has done in the RFC977 draft since INN 1.5+ and NNTP 1.5.12
were published.  Do the Microsoft and Netscape servers use the
old return codes or the new ones?  I should probably review the
INN/NNTP sources to figure out what changes to supply.