🚀 go-pugleaf

	From ihnss!karn  Mon Jun  8 19:18:42 1981
	To: ucbvax!mark
	Re: fa.* netnews categories
	Cc: warren lbo leth
	Status: O
	
	If I post something on fa.info-cpm, for example, and we ship it to
	you by having it in our .sys file, how far will you re-destribute it?
	Does it go back into the Arpanet?
	
	Phil
	
	
No, it only goes out on usenet.  That will include a few arpanet sites,
(at the moment the only arpanet site, cca-unix, gets fa.ALL) but it won't
get sent back to the mailing list.  (I could arrange that, but there
would be a problem: it would go to the whole mailing list, including
csvax.info-cpm@berkeley, and get fed into netnews, and go out to lots
of places, including the mailing list at mit, ......)

One solution to this would be for ALL digests to come from the same site
(now some come from AI, some MC, etc) and I could make that site be
considered a usenet site.  netnews would see the MIT-MC, say, in the
sender's name and not send it back.  If the sender didn't have an MIT-MC
in his address, netnews could mail a copy to some address at MIT for
general distribution (hopefully to everybody EXCEPT Berkeley, to prevent
two copies from being posted.)

Having heard enough horror stories about the mail system at MIT, I expect
it would be easier to fudge software locally to lie to netnews and claim
the sender is at MIT-MC no matter what arpa site it came from.  This
would, however, screw up replies to thing submitted from sites other than
MIT (mail to AI gets forwarded if the home machine is an ITS, but not
if the sender is a random arpa person).  There would also be problems
with digests, since a submission would get posted on usenet immediately,
but the digest editor wants to edit it and include it with other stuff.

If I could get the MIT people to adhere to the netnews protocol and pretend
to be a usenet site (or to even BE a usenet site) things would be
much simpler.  For the MIT people, this means (1) all mail to a digest
would have a copy sent to a mailbox at, say, MC, which would forward it
to Berkeley with a return address at MC.  (E.g. lauren@ucla-s@mc would do,
if such an address works.)  News from Berkeley which did not come from
this mailbox would be sent to some other mailbox at MC (or any address,
really).  I can guarantee to only send mail you haven't seen before iff
mail you have seen before comes from an address with the usenet site
(mit-mc) somewhere in the return address.  You could also get the other
netnews stuff besides arpa digests.

	Mark