Path: utzoo!utstat!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde!uunet!intercon!amanda@mermaid.intercon.com
From: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Our friend, the GMT date.
Message-ID: <1601@intercon.com>
Date: 5 Dec 89 16:30:47 GMT
References: <4364@helios.ee.lbl.gov> <14810@well.UUCP> <1989Dec3.210413.27043@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu> <56239@looking.on.ca> <1989Dec5.142032.7706@talos.uucp>
Sender: news@intercon.com
Reply-To: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker)
Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation
Lines: 38

In article <1989Dec5.142032.7706@talos.uucp>, kjones@talos.uucp (Kyle Jones)
writes:
> Again, if we always humor the laggards who don't want to actually
> administer and maintain their news systems, then we're letting the
> people who care the least about USENET have the most influence over it.

Not so, because USENET is not made up solely of news admins.  The people
who care most about USENET are the people who use it.  Oftentimes they
simply don't have any effective influence over the people who are "maintaining"
news on their systems.

That being said, I've started thinking more and more seriously about the
idea of starting to build "tomorrow's USENET".  There are a lot of
constraints imposed by universal compatibility with existing sites that
would no longer exist if one were to write news from scratch today, such
as:

 - 7-bit printable ASCII only
 - 32K maximum effective message size
 - broken cross-referencing (hi, Brad :-))
 - using the UNIX file system as a database index

and so on.  Lots of people have started making noises about multi-media
mail, news, and RFCs.  Others have started or talked about things like
gateways to and from other services (ClariNet, BIX, Compu$erve, MCI Mail,
FAX, ...).  Still other people have complained about the fact that USENET
has moved from being a network testbed to an operational network.

Well, maybe it's time to start talking about the next one.  It seems
impractical to try and overhaul USENET itself, but nothing's stopping us
from doing something else that makes it obsolete...  If there's enough
energy out there to do things like TMNN, CNews, NN, and so on, it seems
to me that there'd be enough to do something new.

Amanda Walker
InterCon Systems Corporation
Purveyor of fine Macintosh networking software worldwide [:-)]
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