Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Tired of bogus subject lines?
Message-ID: <11975@looking.on.ca>
Date: 12 Sep 89 16:32:55 GMT
References: <1650@unocss.UUCP> <112@blekko.UUCP> <6120@ficc.uu.net> <14656@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Reply-To: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 16
Class: discussion

Oh, there is no question in my mind that the RFC is wrong on this point.
Tracking threads based on the subject that the presence of "re:" is a
stupid way of doing it, and RN's behaviour in this should never have been
coded down into the proposed standard.

But once it was coded in, the correct action for the NN authors would have
been to discuss the change they wanted in news.software.b or some other
appropriate place.  Chances are they would have decided against the change
if they had done this, but that's not important.  Even if they then decided
to go ahead, that would be fine, even if it broke RN, because at least they
would have tried to work it out in advance.

We can't restrict our software to the behaviour of old readers, but we
should check the usefulness and consequences of innovation in advance.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473