Xref: utzoo alt.bbs:205 comp.sys.ibm.pc:20921
Path: utzoo!hoptoad!amdcad!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!gatech!mcdchg!chinet!jkingdon
From: jkingdon@chinet.chi.il.us (James Kingdon)
Newsgroups: alt.bbs,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: BBS Software
Summary: B news software does support access control.
Message-ID: <6900@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 5 Nov 88 04:33:39 GMT
References: <956@galaxy> <5802@hoptoad.uucp> <6569@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <2054@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <109@otishq.UUCP> <2069@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Reply-To: jkingdon@chinet.chi.il.us (James Kingdon)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 27

In article <2069@ddsw1.MCS.COM> karl@ddsw1.UUCP (Karl Denninger) writes:
>The Usenet software is not bad, for what it is.  But it's not a bbs -- it
>contains no access control, no security, nothing but the interface to the
>net itself.  _Everything_ else you get to add yourself.

As a matter of terminology, inews, etc. is known as the B news software
(well, there's C news, a derivation of B news).  Usenet is a group of
sites exchanging mail (some of which use notes, AKCS, etc. instead of
B news).  And of course you could use B news without interfacing your
system to any other sites, if you wanted to.

B news does contain some access control.  Compile news with FASCIST
defined and you can make a list of users who should not have access.
Recent version also have COMMUNIST which lets you make a list of who
should have access.  (I hate these names, but I didn't invent them).
I don't really know how flexible these are compared with other bbs's.
With UNIX, security is provided by the operating system.  I don't know
what ports to operating systems lacking security provisions have done
about this.  And if by "interface to the net itself" you mean to exclude
"user interface" in my humble opinion rn beats the socks off any other
bbs program I've used.  It's hard to learn, but easy to use once you
learn it (although certainly not perfect).  Other programs like vn 
that work with B news and which are
public domain are intended to be less intimidating.

Commercial vs. public domain is another issue; I can see reasons for
or against using public domain bbs's.