[news.software.b] DFTSUB/ADMSUB follies and a TMNN status report

testuser@athena.mit.edu (A Test User) (07/12/89)

I'm at MIT this week working with Ted T'so and Ambar to smash the 4.3 bugs
out of TMNN. At the moment I am experiencing a vast sense of vindication
because after two *long* days of grovelling through the code both of
the serious bugs we have tracked down have been in other people's
code....

Question for the assembled: does anyone called about DFTSUB and ADMSUB
any more?  They are ignored by all "third-party" news readers that I
know of, and easily defeated (in the case of ADMSUB) by a knowledgable
user with a text editor.  DFLTSUB doesn't seem to be very useful in an
environment which gives a new news user a .newsrc containing every
group in the active file.  Our inclination is to remove these two bits
of cruft, unless someone wants to make compelling arguments that they
should stay.

More later, but it's late and I must sleep...


	Eric S. Raymond				eric@snark.uu.net

peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (07/13/89)

In article <12610@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>, testuser@athena.mit.edu (A Test User) writes:
> Question for the assembled: does anyone called about DFTSUB and ADMSUB
> any more?

(raises hand)

Yes, you can get around ADMSUB and DFLTSUB. We use both of these flags at
Ferranti and at Sugarland.

At Ferranti, we have a set of local newsgroups that everyone subscribes to
by default. People have to take an explicit action to see either the Usenet
groups or certain administrative groups that we have that are of minimal
interest to anyone outside the Developer or Xenix support groups.

At Sugarland, we use the Netnews software as the message base for a BBS.
People don't have access to text editors or arbitrary files. Again, in this
environment DFTSUB and ADMSUB are important.

> Our inclination is to remove these two bits
> of cruft, unless someone wants to make compelling arguments that they
> should stay.

Please don't.
-- 
Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
Business: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. | Th-th-th-that's all folks...
Personal: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com.   `-_-' |  -- Mel Blanc
Quote: Have you hugged your wolf today?  'U`  |     May 30 1908 - Jul 10 1989