-=> Quoting mark lewis to Paul Edwards <=-

 ml> LONG time ago... before you came into fidonet? i dunno, but i DO know
 ml> that it's use as a control line was going going gone out back in about
 ml> july of 1990... how do i know this? this is about the time that QBBS
 ml> sysops came out with ReTear, a program to alter the tearlines on
 ml> messages posted on unregistered boards. why was ReTear developed?
 ml> because that old QBBS tearline used to state that the system was
 ml> unregistered and a lot of people didn't like that. so... now the
 ml> tearline is USERtext instead of a control line... how am i so accurate
 ml> on the approx dates of this? because RA v0.04 was released then and
 ml> that's when i picked it and fidonet up > 

Actually, given the above history, retearing is something that should
have been jumped on when it started. The ability to retear does not in
any way imply that retearing is something that you *should* do.

Frankly, I think Fidonet should have seen what was going on and told
sysops that use of retear was grounds for loss of node number. Instead
the netwwork looked the other way at making it easier for sysops to rip
off shareware authors.

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