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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!batcomputer!pyramid!cbmvax!snark!eric
From: eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.misc
Subject: 3.0 news -- clearing up confusion
Message-ID: <223494f9:190e@snark.UUCP>
Date: 9 Mar 88 00:42:26 GMT
Organization: Thyrsus Enterprises, Malvern PA 19355
Lines: 34

I received the following by email today. Since it reflects what may be
a widespread confusion, I am posting it along with my reply.

>  I am starting to get a little confused.  How is your news 3.0 related
>to new C netnews from the University of Toronto?  Are we heading toward
>two different versions of netnews?  I'm not sure I like the sound of that.
>Its hard enough when not everyone is at the latest patch level.  If you 
>could shed some light on this subject I would greatly appreciate it. 

No, 3.0 news is not C news. It is an entirely independent rewrite that
evolved by mutation (and eventual 100% replacement) of the code in the
4.3BSD beta release of 2.10.3. It does incorporate a number of C news
ideas, however, and the Toronto people are listed as contributors to the
design. But I am the person responsible for the code that's in there now.

Henry Spencer and Geoff Collyer have stated that they are not interested
in maintaining a main-line news release. Therefore, my understanding is
that 3.0 will be the official continuation of the B news line. I will maintain
and extend it. I have plans to extend netnews to support full hypertext
functionality, if I can scrape together the money to work on it full-time.

Also note that C news only redoes the "transport" layer -- rnews, expire,
inews. The only reader they supply is a hacked-over Australian version of
readnews. 3.0, on the other hand, supplies rewritten and extended readers,
including a couple of new ones and a back end plus control code for GNUMACS.

I'm going to post this to try and forestall a flood of similar queries.

..!{ihnp4,seismo,rutgers}!cbmvax!snark!eric    -->     Eric S. Raymond

-- 
      Eric S. Raymond                  (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)
      UUCP:  {{seismo,ihnp4,rutgers}!cbmvax,sdcrdcf!burdvax,vu-vlsi}!snark!eric
      Post:  22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355    Phone: (215)-296-5718