Re: ietf-nntp Initial draft FINALLY available

[Chris Caputo <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Stan Barber wrote:
> > >> >9.1 AUTHINFO
> > >> The AUTHINFO SIMPLE and AUTHINFO GENERIC commands are listed, but not the
> > >> plain (and widely used) AUTHINFO USER|PASS command.  Is this intentional?
> > >Yes.
> > Why?  Isn't this what most software is using today?
> There is no need for both AUTHINFO (original) and AUTHINFO SIMPLE since they
> are so similar. We don't need both, so I chose one. If folks think that it
> should be the other one, I don't have a problem with that.

If the purpose of this document is to refine RFC977, I believe we should
only add things that have come into widespread use since RFC977 was
released. 

With this in mind, I believe we should describe AUTHINFO USER|PASS and not
AUTHINFO SIMPLE.  AUTHINFO GENERIC should continue to be included since
there appears to be consensus that this is a good way to extend AUTHINFO. 

The flipside of this is that we may want to consider making optional those
commands that have not been found to be favorable, in terms of
implementation.  NEWNEWS might be a candidate for this.  We've eliminated
it at Altopia, but I am not aware of how the rest of the group feels about
this command.  I'd like to hear Ben Polk's thoughts on this. 

Chris Caputo
President, Altopia Corporation