Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Upgrading Usenet (was Re: Who pays the bill?)
Message-ID: <1990Aug7.180710.3872@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1990Aug1.230858.3264@iwarp.intel.com> <EMV.90Aug1202214@urania.math.lsa.umic <1990Aug02.203405.40@looking.on.ca> <29103@becker.UUCP> <1990Aug04.171540.29439@looking.on.ca> <26BCDA30.21C@intercon.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 90 18:07:10 GMT

In article <26BCDA30.21C@intercon.com> amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) writes:
>... Look at C news--it's ingratiatingly compatible
>with B news, and the only people that seem to be picking up on it are us
>performance weenies out here :-).  It's only gaining widespread acceptance
>very slowly, and that only because it's a fairly "invisible" upgrade...

Actually C News isn't doing too badly; based on analysis of message-IDs
in our history file, C News is running at 600+ sites, about 12% of the
active subset of Usenet.  This method inherently can't measure the
passive subset -- the sites that rarely or never post anything -- but
we know C News gets substantial use among them too.  (The rest of the
active subset is currently split about 50-50 between B News sites and
sites generating weird message-IDs that aren't obviously either B or C.
There is no single dominant form of weirdness. :-))  Both the count
and the percentage for C News are growing steadily.

However... Amanda is right, steady it may be, but it's also slow.
It would probably be somewhat faster if we were sysadmin-compatible
with B News, because learning new procedures increases the conversion
effort.  This bodes ill for any change that involves incompatibility
of a more serious kind.  Yes, a lot of this is sheer inertia, as
witness the sites that are still running B2.6, but each obstacle to
conversion greatly magnifies that inertia.  A seriously-incompatible
news system will have little chance unless it offers really major
benefits to make up for the hassle.
-- 
The 486 is to a modern CPU as a Jules  | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
Verne reprint is to a modern SF novel. |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry
