There are several definitions for such fundamental terms as "Usenet"
and "Netnews", and you are free to choose. For this post, I chose to
quote from a 1995 draft, the author of which seems to be Ronda Hauben.

Ronda, in turn, quoted Horton 1981:

|USENET is a public access network.

Then, she quotes "a description of Usenet posted in March 1982":

|USENET is an international network of UNIX sites with hookups
|into the ARPA network, too. It is basically a fancy
|electronic Bulletin Board System.

. And we find, still in Ronda's text:

|Characterizing Usenet as a logical network, as opposed to a
|physical network, Horton explains that Usenet is a network of
|sites running Netnews software:

Note that the sentence above also says something about "Netnews".
I take it from this that it might be possible that other
networks, different from Usenet, might use Netnews software, too.

The text then continues:

| "For those of you who don't know, USENET is a logical network
| of sites running netnews. Netnews is a network oriented
| bulletin board, making it very easy to broadcast a query to
| a large base of people. USENET currently has about 50 sites
| and is growing rapidly."(30)
|
| Horton emphasizes that Usenet is a users' network. He
|explains: "USENET exists for and by the users, and should respond
|to the needs of those users."(31)
|
| He also notes that "USENET is a cashless network." This
|meant that "No person or organization may charge another
|organization for news, except that by prearrangement." He
|explains that a site could charge only for the extra expenses
|incurred in sending Usenet to another site. And almost every site
|that received news had to be willing to forward it to at least
|two additional sites.

.

On 29 Feb 2024 08:21:01 GMT, ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:
> There are several definitions for such fundamental terms as "Usenet"
> and "Netnews", and you are free to choose. For this post, I chose to
> quote from a 1995 draft, the author of which seems to be Ronda Hauben.
>
> Ronda, in turn, quoted Horton 1981:
>
>|USENET is a public access network.
>
> Then, she quotes "a description of Usenet posted in March 1982":
>
>|USENET is an international network of UNIX sites with hookups
>|into the ARPA network, too. It is basically a fancy
>|electronic Bulletin Board System.
>
> . And we find, still in Ronda's text:
>
>|Characterizing Usenet as a logical network, as opposed to a
>|physical network, Horton explains that Usenet is a network of
>|sites running Netnews software:
>
> Note that the sentence above also says something about "Netnews".
> I take it from this that it might be possible that other
> networks, different from Usenet, might use Netnews software, too.
>
> The text then continues:
>
>| "For those of you who don't know, USENET is a logical network
>| of sites running netnews. Netnews is a network oriented
>| bulletin board, making it very easy to broadcast a query to
>| a large base of people. USENET currently has about 50 sites
>| and is growing rapidly."(30)
>|
>| Horton emphasizes that Usenet is a users' network. He
>|explains: "USENET exists for and by the users, and should respond
>|to the needs of those users."(31)
>|
>| He also notes that "USENET is a cashless network." This
>|meant that "No person or organization may charge another
>|organization for news, except that by prearrangement." He
>|explains that a site could charge only for the extra expenses
>|incurred in sending Usenet to another site. And almost every site
>|that received news had to be willing to forward it to at least
>|two additional sites.
>
> .

awesome . . . saved for reference