From: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis)
Newsgroups: news.future
Subject: Re: Newsreader supporting MIME
Date: 7 Nov 92 04:46:00 GMT
Organization: Elegant Communications Inc., Ottawa, Canada

In article <1992Nov6.171225.4595@rdg.dec.com> kostis@frsmic.enet.dec.com (Kosta Kostis) writes:
>In article <Bx9zEu.K4p@cs.psu.edu>, fenner@postscript.cs.psu.edu (Bill Fenner) writes...
>>In article <1992Nov4.184642.18831@rdg.dec.com> kostis@frsmic.enet.dec.com (Kosta Kostis) writes:
>>|Changing a C source not to contain a "& 0377" and to use
>>|int instead of char at a special location of the code *is* a problem of
>>|manageable size, isn't it?

>>Sure, if you're paying any attention.  There are sites where nobody cares
>>about the news software, and it's running on autopilot.  The periodic version
>>summaries always end up turning up software that's at least 5 years old... if
>>you can't be bothered to upgrade your software to improve performance or fix
>>bugs, you certainly can't be bothered to upgrade for the significantly more
>>minor benefit of being 8-bit clean.

>It may be a minor benefit for you, but it's not minor for people outside
>the english speaking community - and that's the majority in the world.

This may well be true, but irrelevant - something like 80% of the people
on the net are in the USA.

>Poor maintenance is no excuse. If all things would go that slow, imagine
>the impact on science and todays life. Well, I just think we should move
>our lazy b*s and do something about it.

All things *do* go that slow.  Or slower.  How long was it before the
Wright brother's invention was widely used?

Probably half of the installed base is with software that isn't supported
at all any more.  And often not actively maintained either.  What you're
asking them to do is completely replace what they have with different
software, when they may no longer have anybody who understands what
is currently there works, let alone newer stuff.  That isn't easy.

>My main problem with this is not even 5 years old software, but that there
>is software like BNews which still maintained but isn't 8 Bit clean.
>That's ignorance.

BNews hasn't been supported in depth for at least four years.  The last patch
to it was about three years ago.  The author of Bnews hasn't been running
it for at least two.  Bnews at the very latest patch level has a number of
identified bugs.  And some of them cause grief to many sites when tripped
over.

The fact of the matter is that there are many sites running software even
older than 5 years.  Rick's latest survey turned up a number of 2.9 Bnews
sites, and that was several revs before even moderated groups were supported!
And on UNIX, Bnews, at revisions 4 years or older, still makes up nearly
half of the installed base.

Railing about poor maintenance is simply not going to do any good.  To
be used, 8bit penetration must be near 100%.  Maybe in a couple of years
it will be practical to ship 8 bit when INN and C news cover the vast
majority.  Then it's just the big non-UNIX crowd with some software even
more primitive than B.2.9 to worry about.
-- 
Chris Lewis; clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca; Phone: Canada 613 832-0541
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