bernie@DIALix.oz.au (Bernd Felsche) (12/12/90)
In <20665@crg5.UUCP> szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes: >How can news be used in a large workgroup? In what situations is >it preferable to e-mail? Here are some ideas for things that might >be good to communicate through news: Well, I'm working on it! The main dis-incentive is the lack of control of readership (locally) for the newsgroups. Anybody can read news once it's on the system. This could compromise the security of proprietry information. I recently posted an article in news.software.nn, about security enhancements, especially access control lists. (ACLs) This could restrict readership of newsgroups effectively, while not making everybody's mailboxes explode. I envisage that the news articles, would only be accessible by the "news" user, and that the newsreader would run set-group-id to news, so that it could read the articles, if it decides that the reader is in the ACL for the requested newsgroup. The schema of names needs to have knowledge of network addresses, so that the news system can pass news from one site to another, and consistently preserve user names. At present, the only obstacle is management of the ACLs (and the set-group-id traps). Who administers the ACLs is the most important factor, and the means for distributing the ACLs to relevant sites is also of considerable importance. The exact architecture is still to be decided upon, though a special control message seems the most consistent with current net usage. Any ideas and/or contributions will be greatfully accepted. -- ________Bernd_Felsche__________bernie@DIALix.oz.au_____________ [ Phone: +61 9 419 2297 19 Coleman Road ] [ TZ: UTC-8 Calista, Western Australia 6167 ]