Re: What is the best way to add a newsgroup?

On Sun, 24 May 2026 13:41:10 -0500, VanguardLH <[email protected]> wrote:

>The Horny Goat <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I've also heard that Agent was 'abandonware' which wouldn't surprise
>> me given how many servers have abandoned Usenet as a whole.
>
>Last paid version 8 was released 12 years ago (Oct 2014).  While a long
>time since the last release, they're still accepting payment.  I believe
>they are still running their own Usenet server (paid).  Not quite yet
>abandonware, just old.  

Yup - that's around the time I gave them my money...let's face it, if
Usenet were booming the way the latest Internet wares were going (pick
one of your choice <grin>) there would have been 3 or 4 versions of
Agent since v8.


>I don't use Agent Forte (played with the free version a couple decades
>ago, but found better free alternatives), so I have not lurked over in
>the alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent newsgroup to know if there are
>any major defects with the program.

So what's your software of choice for this purpose? (I use Agent
primarily for binaries but it does a fairly decent job on text groups)
>
>> You probably have forgotten the line from Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow
>> Taxi" (which says a lot to me about Usenet which is a long way towards
>> "gone" alas) which goes
>> 
>> "Don't it always seem to go
>> That you don't know what you've got
>> Till it's gone
>> They paved paradise
>> And put up a parking lot"
>
>But what is there to pave over with the Agent "paradise"?  If it aint
>broken, nothing to pave over.  I'm sure there remain some bugs, or RFEs
>(Requests for Enhancement), but they would have to weight the cost of
>further development, and fixing bugs in the new code, against their
>volume of sales.  No idea of how much revenue trickles in for an NNTP
>client in a communications venue that doesn't involve a web browser.  If
>it aint Web, users born in the last 2 decades won't know how to use it.

No question my 3 kids (who are all in their 30s and learned from me
20+ years ago) feel the same way. (My son in particular who is an
electrical engineer contracting to a rather large Web company you
would certainly know)