[news.software.b] Isn't this group supposed to be for Bnews?

jim@cssinc.UUCP (Jim McCorison) (03/30/91)

Being relatively new to the net I may have missed some historical aspect of
this group, but isn't it supposed to be for Bnews discussion? It currently seems
to be dominated by Cnews.

It would sure make life easier on those of us still struggling with Bnews if
there was a news.software.c group thereby making it easier to find the few, but
valuable, Bnews postings.

Please no flames if this happens to trigger an ancient sore spot :-) (as I said
above I may have missed prior history).  Sign me, Lost in a C of postings

-- 
Jim McCorison 				Phone: 206-455-3507
jim@cssinc				Fax  : 206-646-9582
"Reality... What a concept!"		UUCP : ... uunet!cssinc!jim
**** Even if CSS knew my opinions, I doubt they'd consider them theirs as well.

henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (03/31/91)

In article <2202@cssinc.UUCP> jim@cssinc.UUCP (Jim McCorison) writes:
>Being relatively new to the net I may have missed some historical aspect of
>this group, but isn't it supposed to be for Bnews discussion? It currently seems
>to be dominated by Cnews.

The current interpretation is that it's for B-compatible news discussion.
A couple of attempts to create a news.software.c have failed, mostly because
it is, frankly, a dumb idea.  The issues are very often common to both, and
there isn't enough B-specific traffic to justify a separate B News group.
What would be more sensible would be to rename it to news.software.transport,
which would make its broader meaning more explicit.
-- 
"The stories one hears about putting up | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
SunOS 4.1.1 are all true."  -D. Harrison|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry

kyle@uunet.UU.NET (Kyle Jones) (04/02/91)

jim@cssinc.UUCP (Jim McCorison) writes:
 > Being relatively new to the net I may have missed some historical aspect of
 > this group, but isn't it supposed to be for Bnews discussion? It currently seems
 > to be dominated by Cnews.

henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
 > The current interpretation is that it's for B-compatible news discussion.
 > A couple of attempts to create a news.software.c have failed, mostly because
 > it is, frankly, a dumb idea.  The issues are very often common to both, and
 > there isn't enough B-specific traffic to justify a separate B News group.
 > What would be more sensible would be to rename it to news.software.transport,
 > which would make its broader meaning more explicit.

Often the issues discussed are _not_ common to both news systems,
which is what McCorison implied in his article.  Witness the
recent problems with relaynews (or some hacked version thereof),
and the C news specific error messages about history and explist
being corrupted.

B news and C news are not compatible at the administrative level.
A lot of B news and C news specific administrative questions are
asked in this newsgroup.  Separating the traffic doesn't mean
the end of common discussions, it just means such discussion need
to be cross-posted.  Cross-posting is something that I hope to
God news administrators, at least, can do intelligently.

Renaming the group to news.software.transport legitimizes the
potluck variety of traffic, but it doesn't adress thr problem
that McCorison pointed out in his article.

davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (04/02/91)

In article <127221@uunet.UU.NET> kyle@uunet.UU.NET (Kyle Jones) writes:

| henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
|  > The current interpretation is that it's for B-compatible news discussion.
|  > A couple of attempts to create a news.software.c have failed, mostly because
|  > it is, frankly, a dumb idea.  

  It has died because the authors of Cnews have fought against the
division, and flooded this groups with C_news patch reports,
administrative details, and other stuff which is of no interest to B
news users.

  Purely politics, any claim of technical merit is not supported by
analysis of the postings. By my count about 62% are purely dedicated to
one system or the other.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
        "Most of the VAX instructions are in microcode,
         but halt and no-op are in hardware for efficiency"