[NNTP] [2501] Reader commands in transit servers and vice-versa

[Ken Murchison]

Russ Allbery wrote:

> Clive D W Feather <clive at demon.net> writes:
> 
> 
>>Issue: if a server advertises itself as transit-only, should it be
>>allowed to implement some of the reader-only commands or not?
> 
> 
> Yes.  As Andrew pointed out, there's no reason to forbid a server from
> doing this, and it's useful for various purposes.
> 
> The question is more whether we want to define a mechanism for the server
> to *tell* a client that it's doing this.  If we don't, then a compliant
> client will never know it can use the commands, won't use them, and
> therefore they'll be there basically only for debugging and for internal
> purposes.
> 
> Personally, I think that's fine, and better than the complexity of trying
> to define a way of communicating all this information.  I would rather
> take the route of specifying what the *client* should do based on what the
> server says it supports and simply remain mum on the question of what the
> server might do outside of what it's advertising that it does.

I agree in pricipal, but is a transit-only server which allows "suck" 
feeds a common enough case where a "NEWNEWS" argument to the "TRANSIT" 
capability would make sense?

We're special-casing the POST command for reader-only servers and 
NEWNEWS for transit-only seems similar.

-- 
Kenneth Murchison     Oceana Matrix Ltd.
Software Engineer     21 Princeton Place
716-662-8973 x26      Orchard Park, NY 14127
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