On Mon, 13 Jan 2003, Bruce Lilly wrote:
B News predates RFC1036.
And B news was still in use many years after RFC 1036 was
published (Dec. 1987).
B News use probably peaked around the time 1036 was published. It was
already in decline by the time of the first data I have (about a year
later). After the first polished C News release in 1989, B News use
dwindled rather spectacularly; a lot of people had been hurting from its
limitations. It had only a small share of Usenet by 1992, when INN
delivered the coup de grace. That was about the time when we stopped
paying much attention to B News compatibility as an issue in further
C News development.
It was certainly still in use in the mid-90s.
In minor backwaters of the net only. (Even A News was still in use, here
and there, into the 90s.) When O'Reilly and I agreed on the first outline
for what eventually became "Managing Usenet", in summer 1993, B News was
mentioned only in the history chapter; Usenet was overwhelmingly dominated
by C News and INN then.
Nobody in the mid-90s was concerned about B News compatibility any more.
As a constraint on (e.g.) 8-bit content, it was years dead by then.
Henry Spencer
henry(_at_)spsystems(_dot_)net