Subj : Re: Is binkp/d's security model kaputt?
To   : Atreyu
From : tenser
Date : Wed Sep 08 2021 05:52 am

On 03 Sep 2021 at 05:23p, Atreyu pondered and said...
 
 At> While that is very true, the problem is the hobbyist protocols designed
 At> by amateurs are here to stay, thats what the vast majority of Sysops
 At> appear to be comfortable with. BinkD was the last "real" innovation
 At> because it solved a problem which were the hodgepodge cumbersome
 At> scripting, FTP and TransX/Email methods of the time. There has not been
 At> one single FTN innovation since then that is worthy of being adapted on
 At> such a mass-scale like BinkD was.

I suspect you are right, but I also suspect that the people who
are content with binkp don't care about the security model etc.
There's only so much lipstick one can put on a pig, after all.

 At> Every couple of years or so this same exact topic comes up, almost
 At> verbatim, and after some banter about why it would be great to use
 At> something else/something better... even if someone is spot-on correct
 At> with something technically, eventually there is that realization that
 At> FTN's are what they are and won't change. Then that convo fizzles out.
 At> Sysops are just happy trading banter on a flawed/obsolete network
 At> because they made it just work.

I don't see why people can't make incremental progress towards
a new protocol.  A mechanism based on e.g. HTTP (and one might
notice that the protocol I sketched is kinda like streaming
NNTP, FWIW) could be used backbones between hubs, with binkp
remaining for edge nodes; over time, as software-still-under-
development adopts the new protocols, and as binkp becomes
increasingly archaic, fewer and fewer systems will use the
latter.  Eventually, it'll be a handful that are using a
compatibility layer.

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