C News patch of 7-Sep-1990

[Greg A. Woods]

In article <1990Sep17.210150.1586 at vicom.com> lmb at vicom.com (Larry Blair) writes:
> They distributed the software and have actively promoted it as the `better'
> alternative.  Their software has caused my site and the rest of the net
> considerable grief due to the (now fixed) inews -C bug and the overly long
> message id's (which broke rn).  This is whether I run C News or 2.11.  The
> problem with their patch scheme is that many admins are unsure if it is safe
> to apply a patch or if they are up to date and this has led to a continuation
> of the inews -C problem.

I *never* had a problem with the rn vs. C news, and I'm not so blind
to believe a totally different system will have the same administrative
interface.  Perhaps 'inews -C' could have been avoided somehow.  It's a
common mistake to assume people have more common sense than they
actually do, but if we worked with the LCD, we'd never get anywhere.

Yes, I agree they have a responsibility, but it is only to deliver
what they have been promising, which they have readily outdone
themselves with C news.  They did not promise to use Configure (which
is OK by me), and they did not promise to follow blindly down the
beaten path of traditional "net"-style software maintenance (which I'm
also quite happy to see).  [I would like to see a different manner of
software maintenance and configuration than now exists for C news, but
I gave up complaining and designed my own custom version....  :-)]

> There is one fact that I want to make abundantly clear: I applaud Henry and
> Geoff's efforts to write and maintain C News.  Without their work many sites
> would have drowned in the ever increasing traffic on the net.  There are
> things about C News over which Henry and I have disagreed ever since I
> started running it (which was before it was posted to the net), but that
> doesn't mean that I don't have a great deal of respect for him.

Same goes for me.  (I ran the alpha version on a couple of sites, and
have never gone back to 2.11, and never will.)
-- 
						Greg A. Woods

woods@{eci386,gate,robohack,ontmoh,tmsoft}.UUCP
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