Hello andrew!

05 May 03 14:36, andrew clarke wrote to Joe Davis:

 ac> I wasn't aware of such a rule, although it seems to have existed since
 ac> at least June 1998 according to my archives (and most likely before
 ac> then).  What's the rationale behind that, anyway?

In the "olden days" (mid to late eighties), BBS software was a
viable solution for corporate support BBSes that supplied support forums,
downloads, drivers, firmware updates, etc. in the manner that their web
sites do today.  Some BBS software was even commercial-only and not
released in shareware versions.  Many authors considered a shareware
release an avenue for beta-tester feedback and feature suggestions, which
would make the software more valuable to their real paying
customers...corporate users.

Also, all of those jerks that are spreading trojans and viruses on the
internet today, were messing with Fidonet and BBSes instead.  There were
often "BBS war" threads on a par with the "OS war"
threads that persist today, and the evangelists of one package would make
themselves a pain in the development forums of a major competing
package...whining about this feature delta or that one, this approach vs.
that one, this bug or that one...

So, restricting access to users of the product was a reasonable way to keep
the chatter down, and allow free discussion of security issues, bugs,
exploits, etc as new versions and beta versions were released while
minimizing the odds that generic ne'er-do-wells would use the information
to compromise the systems currently online.

I believe that I linked to this area in late '89 or early '90, while 1.0x
was in wide beta.  Scott always had a third-party moderate, as he was busy
with the development and had his own private messagebases on his board for
providing support to his corporate customers.  Any time a moderator moved
on, Scott would poll for a new volunteer and basically state, "You can
moderate the echo any way you like, provided you keep it restricted to
Maximus users only."

.\\ike

--- GoldED 2.50+