linux.* newsgroups (off-topic)

[Russ Allbery]

David C Lawrence <tale at iengines.com> writes:

> The last I heard, the linux.* hierarchy was officially removed by its
> creators.  The USENET Config Files FAQ also lists it as a defunct
> hierarchy.

> I am trying to get more information on its existence as a rogue
> hierarchy and its possible sense as such.  That is, even though they
> abandonded it, maybe it should still be carried.  Does anyone have any
> information about whether it is being maintained, whether there is an
> authoritative list of groups, what kind of traffic it gets, how well
> distributed it appears to me ... any information at all?

It's still being supposedly maintained by someone at Fuller University,
who's e-mail address I have.  He even posts periodic checkgroups, but he's
posting them to the group "linux" so they're propagating extremely poorly.
I don't believe he has a strong understanding of what's involved in
running a hierarchy.  I also have no idea if the group list he's producing
bears any resemblence to what the Linux vendors think is out there.

The mail to news gateways in linux.dev.* have a spotty history, but I
believe they're currently turned on again.  From time to time, they get
turned off because list members complain about spam.

linux.debian.* and linux.redhat.* I believe have been "taken over" by
those particular organizations and last I checked had a variety of gated
mailing list traffic, but I know of no canonical group list.

In other words, it's a mess.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)         <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>