[NNTP] Revisiting POST as a separate capability

Clive D.W. Feather clive at demon.net
Fri Mar 25 00:57:56 PST 2005


Russ Allbery said:
>> However, we currently have two commands that do almost the same thing:
>> POST and IHAVE. The only protocol-level difference (except that
>> different response codes are used) is that the latter specifies a
>> message-id on the command line and the former does not.
> 
> The difference in practice is that POST inserts trace information, while
> IHAVE presumes that the remote host is trusted and modifies only the Path.

Right. But those aren't *protocol* issues; they're part of what I described
as:

>> The *reason* for having these two separate commands is, as we say, that
>> one is intended to signal "new article" and the other "relayed
>> article".

I then wrote:

>> The former is very unlikely to happen unless the client is
>> also doing newsreading.
> I don't think this is the case.

This is the crux of the matter.

> I can name a half-dozen processes just
> off the top of my head that only need POST access to my server, not read
> access, but are still posting new articles.  All of the moderators I
> provide an injection point for, for example (although they're currently
> using IHAVE, that's not completely correct in many cases).

Hmm, moderation injection point is a case I hadn't thought of.

> After thinking about this for a while, I do think we should make it
> possible (although it's not sufficiently important enough to me to argue
> against a consensus if people disagree).

I'm still a little bit uncomfortable but not enough to argue against a
consensus on your side. I think that means we cancel each other out :-)

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:    +44 20 8495 6138
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