Path: utzoo!utstat!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!ucsd!nosc!humu!pegasus!richard
From: richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Passing on unwanted groups
Message-ID: <1990Aug24.020520.19928@pegasus.com>
Date: 24 Aug 90 02:05:20 GMT
References: <1990Aug21.161506.21784@zoo.toronto.edu> <1990Aug22.151531.29862@caen.engin.umich.edu> <1990Aug22.224100.5660@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: Pegasus,  Honolulu
Lines: 38

>>>Systems where chown is in some strange place, like /etc, that isn't in the
>>>default search path.
>>
>>I quote from the "build" script in the cnews/conf directory:
>
>Build is asking that so it can construct its own shell scripts
>appropriately... but build already sticks its tentacles into far too many
>places.  I do *not* want to see it editing every shell program we supply!
>(And that's about what it would take.)
>
>Look guys, I'm sorry -- a little -- but fixing everything in C News to
>catch errors by careless or incompetent sysadmins is way, way down on
>my list of priorities.  It's too much work for too futile an objective.

Obstinance.  That often seems to be the biggest problem with taking
Cnews the extra few inches necessary for wider acceptance.

Henry's a good guy, and Cnews is a superior package.

But the "not invented here" attitude.  And the "let's make a statement
while we're at it" approach is stifling things.

Our favorite OS is better than yours.  We hate patchlevels so we'll dream
up something of our own (Cnews will suffer, but that's beside the point).
Bnews is so awful that we won't even keep a copy online to look at --
better to reinvent the wheel (and the bugs) wherever possible.  We can't
use Configure, we didn't invent that either.

I've been using Cnews for about ten months.  It does a good job and it's
very fast.

No disrespect meant.  I'm not in a very diplomatic mood at the moment --
this outburst has been percolating for some time, I guess.  There's some
constructive criticism in there somewhere. . .


-- 
Richard Foulk		richard@pegasus.com