[net.news] mailing lists vs. newsgroups: improvements possible

gnu@l5.uucp (John Gilmore) (09/13/85)

In article <1300013@ccvaxa>, preece@ccvaxa.UUCP writes:
>                             if I ran a mailing list with 50 people
> getting it, the link from me through uiucdcs and ihnp4 would get all
> 50 copies of every distribution and every response, as opposed to one
> copy in news form.

There are things we can do about this.  I posted the mods to sendmail
to make it safe to forward to multiple recipients over a uucp link
(without overflowing command buffers in uux) awhile ago.  Sun runs
these mods to its sales offices and some other mail partners (who are
known to accept multiple recipients in "rmail" commands).  The mods are
now in the 4.3bsd sendmail, thru the efforts of Bill Nowicki and Eric
Allman.

This doesn't help much if the next site down the line doesn't do the
same; and if the paths get long, only a few fit in the uux buffer; but
this is just a reminder that there are technological improvements we
can make in the -mail- system as well as the -news- system...

peter@graffiti.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (09/26/85)

WHat happened to the suggestion to make some mods to make groups
like mail.guitar possible? The idea was that each machine should have
a mailbox called something meaningful, and the body of any mail to that
box be sent through rnews. I don't think you'ld even have to add any
software... even sites without sendmail could run a daemon each night
to pick up new mailnews. You just wouldn't pass mail.* on to anyone.
Or maybe you would... just don't make it global.  For followups you just
have to put in the right moderator.

I think I'm up to writing the daemon...