At 10:33 15/12/97 +0100, Hugo Embrechts wrote: >nntpcache is indeed a very useful tool. But you have to take it as >free software, other people will not solve your problems on >command. If fixing a shortcoming is urgent for you go and read the >code. It is very well written. I found it a pleasure to read, >although there are very few comment lines in it. It's not free software. The registration makes that fairly clear and many of us on the list have parted with a few hundred dollars for it. We expect that stuff which is broken should be fixed relatively quickly, or at least acknowledged, and not just grudgingly. ihave relaying worked once. It got broken somewhere between 1.0 and 1.0.7.1, but as I've already discussed, the brokenness is a mixed blessing because it has no access control (The Proff "untested" ihave access control patches die horribly in compilation stages). Once ihave relaying is fixed, spammers who have access to nntpcached servers will quickly find that it's available and the software will end up on a spam blacklist. I don't want that and nor does any other caring admin. Ihave relaying is broken. Ihave access control is broken. Both need fixing, urgently. No offence to all the enthusiastic supporters on the list, but I've been down the path I'm seeing open up with other "author supported" software. Waffle 1.67 has been due out "real soon now" since 1994 and the comp.bbs.waffle FAQ gives a reminder of what happens to software (even when source code is available) if the author isn't supporting it. I started out on Usenet in 1989 and I'll be buggered if I'm going to drop support for my local newsreading community in favour of a wholly web-based ISP as so many seem to be doing. It's just that out on the fringes of the net, UUCP batching is still widely used to keep costs down and ihave is a necessary part of injecting UUCP originated articles back into Usenet - post loses too much important header information. I have over 100 low cost UUCP leaf sites connecting to me and right now they're denied the chance to participate in the groups they're reading. (And yes, I have solved the issue of generating UUCP gzipped news batches from a caching server. The software is a bit rough round the edges yet - especially in the configuration dept - but it's getting batches out happily.) AB
