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Re: Packaging an RGTP server and client



Thomas Thurman writes ("Packaging an RGTP server and client"):
> There is a bulletin board system at Cambridge University called GROGGS[1].
> Since 1995 it has used a TCP protocol called RGTP[2], which also finds
> limited use at a few other sites. Various pieces of software related to
> RGTP exist. I maintain two of these: "yarrow", a web client for RGTP,
> and "spurge", a fairly simple RGTP server. spurge is not the RGTP server
> used on GROGGS itself.

Why not package the GROGGS RGTP server ? [1]

> It has occasionally been suggested to me that I should package these two.

If it has been suggested by people who would like to install the
packages via Debian then surely yes.  They probably want to be in
"extra".

> Before I even consider this, I wondered what people thought about
> their general usefulness. Together they provide a bare-bones web bulletin
> board system, but there are many others. The existence of a
> client-independent protocol is perhaps a small bonus. But it's
> not as though there had been a massive take-up of RGTP outside
> a few Cambridge people.

This bulletin board system is not a web bbs; it's a plain text BBS
with a web UI.  I think that's a significantly different offering to
most other web BBSs.

> (For completeness, I should mention that other RGTP clients have already
> been debianised but are not included in Debian's catalogue, notably
> greed[3].)

Perhaps we should have a complete RGTP kit.

[1] Declaration of interest: I was the original author of the RGTP
protocol spec and the reference implementation used on GROGGS.  Thomas
knows this I'm sure.

Ian.


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