Xref: utzoo news.software.b:3166 news.software.nntp:322
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!brian
From: brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: rn/rrn patchlevels, etc.
Message-ID: <10049@ucsd.Edu>
Date: 9 Oct 89 06:35:44 GMT
References: <47.filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us> <54.filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us>
Reply-To: brian@ucsd.edu (Brian Kantor)
Followup-To: news.software.b
Organization: The Avant-Garde of the Now, Ltd.
Lines: 16

The author of 'rn', Larry Wall, has publicly stated that he isn't going
to do any more work on 'rn'.  Rather, he is (in his limited free time)
in the process of writing a new news reader.  Perl grew out of that effort.

My guess is when/if this new newsreader is available, it'll blow all
the others out of the water.

In the meantime, I know of no one collecting patches or taking
maintenance responsibility for 'rn'.  It is essentially a mature
product with a few minor bugs.  Or maybe you can consider it an orphan,
if that makes you feel better.

I suspect that if you were to publish bugfixes in comp.sources.bugs, or
put them out somewhere for FTP retrieval, people would be grateful.  But
I doubt you'll ever see any more official patches for 'rn'.
	- Brian