The End of Gmane? (ingebrigtsen.no) 39
If any of you use mailing list archive Gmane, you would want to start looking at its alternative. Gmane developer Lars Ingebrigtsen announced Thursday that he is thinking about ending the decade-old email-to-news gateway. But first, for those unaware about Gmane, here's is what it does: It allows users to access electronic mailing lists as if they were Usenet newsgroups, and also through a variety of web interfaces. Gmane is an archive; it never expires messages (unless explicitly requested by users). Gmane also supports importing list postings made prior to a list's inclusion on the service.Ingebrigtsen said Gmane machines are under numerous DDoS attacks -- coupled with some other issues -- that have made him wonder whether it is worth the time and effort to keep Gmane ticking. He writes: I'm thinking about ending Gmane, at least as a web site. Perhaps continue running the SMTP-to-NNTP bridge? Perhaps not? I don't want to make 20-30K mailing lists start having bouncing addresses, but I could just funnel all incoming mail to /dev/null, I guess... The nice thing about a mailing list archive (with NNTP and HTTP interfaces) is that it enables software maintainers to say (whenever somebody suggests using Spiffy Collaboration Tool of the Month instead of yucky mailing lists) is "well, just read the stuff on Gmane, then". I feel like I'm letting down a generation here.As Gmane's future remains uncertain, Ingebrigtsen recommends people to have a look at Mail Archive.
ObPFCHudson (Score:4, Funny)
Gmane over, man! Gmane over!
Re: (Score:3)
Does it bother anyone else that a single moderator can decide that a post is without merit and greatly decrease its visibility?
Newsgroups are dead. I've been using the internet since the early 1990s and I've never used and newsgroup once. I don't know anyone who does. Maybe they once had value a long time ago, but they're obsolete. As for email, I rarely use email to contact anyone outside of work. Even businesses don't like providing email support any longer, instead moving to chat-based support. I don't email friends much. I text them or send them messages on social media. I've always thought email forwards were obnoxious, but now people just share stuff on social media and don't forward stuff. I still get a lot of spam, but I don't use email much. And I don't know a lot of people who use email much for stuff that's not formal. Email is dying, though it's not obsolete yet.
If you disagree, fine. But reply instead of using moderation as a -1 disagree. That's an abuse.
Try logging in instead of posting as an AC if you want more respect. The Slashdot moderation scheme explicitly discourages moderators from explaining their mods since their mod go away if they post anywhere else the thread. So if someone disagrees with you, they'll either downmod you (if they have modpoints) or tell you why they disagree, but they can't do both.
Re: (Score:2)
You haven't been using the internet since the early 1990s. You used a small subset of it, namely the web with a splash of email, probably through the AOL portal you got off the first CD-ROM they posted through your door. If that was enough for you, fine, but don't declare anything is of no use if you never used it or have no idea of what you're talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
I used news groups a lot in the 90s. After I went to a provider that didn't have decent news group coverage, I subscribed to (Free)Agent's service and even bought the full of Agent.
In the last 10 years, my use has decline to pretty much nothing.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Nothing of value was lost (Score:2)
What is this chat you're speaking of?
I don't see too many people on IRC. Perhaps you mean something as backward as Skype? No thanks.
Anyway, sorry but mail and mailing lists still are very relevant. I'll miss GMane dearly myself and wouldn't mind donating a few grands to keep it alive.
It's still the best format for discussion with people in open-source and other projects.
Re:Nothing of value was lost (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing the bigger picture -- whether Usenet itself is dead or not, the fact that we're replacing open protocols with closed, proprietary web interfaces controlled by a single entity is a huge regression. Replacing Usenet with 8 million different web forums that I have to register with individually and use a different interface to read is not an improvement.
NNTP and SMTP may be old protocols but the problems they solve haven't gone away, only changed somewhat. People still talk about stuff in public. People still exchange private messages with each other. None of that is obsolete. That doesn't mean old protocols can't change or new ones can't be invented, but if you don't understand why and how the old stuff worked, all you're doing is jerking yourself off with a shiny Javascript widget. We don't need any more of that, thanks.
TLS duh. (Score:1)
The protocols don't need to go away, but they should be updated the way SSL era stuff should have been with a TLS capable frontend handler and a backend server that actually touches requests. Make sure the frontend is secure and heavily vetted, then just relay plaintext or encrypted smtp/nntp content via the channel. If you want to provide secure-only smtp/nntp, you just reject connections that don't start with a STARTTLS and move on from there.
I don't think either of them are datagram, but even if they are
Re: (Score:1)
> Those old protocols do need to go away. Simply put, they're not secure.
*cough* https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4642 *cough* https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3207 *cough*.
Unless "wrapping it in TLS" isn't secure, in which case HTTPS is not secure. I bet that's a claim that you don't want to make.
> Social media and instant messaging need not necessarily be closed protocols; they're better off when they're open, secure, and encrypted.
See above.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless "wrapping it in TLS" isn't secure, in which case HTTPS is not secure. I bet that's a claim that you don't want to make
Don't follow security news much do you?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
> Don't follow security news much do you?
I do. There's BEAST (2011, SSL3/TLS1.0 only), CRIME (2012, TLS1.0->1.2), BREACH (2013, TLS1.0->1.2), and POODLE (mid 2014, SSL 3.0). In late 2014, it was discovered that a few faulty TLS implementations were also vulnerable to POODLE. They have since been fixed. BEAST mitigations have been in place for *ages*. CRIME and BREACH only work when TLS compression is enabled, so the fix for that is fairly trivial.
Are there any significant recent ones that I missed?
Re: (Score:3)
You're missing the bigger picture -- whether Usenet itself is dead or not, the fact that we're replacing open protocols with closed, proprietary web interfaces controlled by a single entity is a huge regression. Replacing Usenet with 8 million different web forums that I have to register with individually and use a different interface to read is not an improvement.
Well the nice things about web forums is that they can set their own terms for registration, moderation, user behavior and so on and if people don't like it they can move to a different one. Newsgroups kinda worked so long as bandwidth was a scarce resource and you wouldn't just waste it needlessly. You had moderated groups but that was very rudimentary and not very popular, but the rest was just open season for spam and trolls and bots. Without changing signup captchas to keep mass signups at bay most foru
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You don't have to visit any web forums to read them. Nearly every site has an RSS feed, and those which don't can be scraped and converted into RSS with something like Feed43.com.
I would HATE using my smart phone to read the news if it wasn't for RSS. /.'s mobile site is the single worst piece of crap I've ever seen. But with RSS I'm fortunately able t
Thanks Lars! (Score:1)
In an experimental (and futile) project where I attempted to delete all references about myself from the Internet, Lars graciously deleted an article for me. Thanks Lars!
Re: (Score:1)
All anyone does is bitch about how much email they get and spend countless hours dicking with filters.
That's what's nice about using the nntp feed of Gmane. You can selectively read and filter mailing lists posts with a newsreader without actually dealing with the hassle of sorting through a large volume of email generated by the lists.
NSA (Score:2, Troll)
An unique and great service (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering Gmane has been for the most part a one-man effort on his free time, what Lars achieved is truly impressive.
I am a newsreader user, and I will certainly miss Gmane. If you will miss it too, show your support to Lars!
Blame the Assholes... (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone DDOSing is a complete worthless asshole.
Anyone doing this to Gmane is the worlds biggest asshole.
So shut it down, the current generation of little shits dont deserve the cool stuff we had when the internet was started.
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone grows out of it, but then new kids grow into it.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Kids... (Score:2)
...what the summary tries to say: this was peepaw's twitter at the time, just with more possibilities.
DDOS Problems (Score:1)
FUCK CLOUDFLARE.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Second or third biggest fingerprinting technique on the internet. And a huge thorn for Tor users, since recaptcha or cloudflare itself could be fingerprinting you across sites. (wayback.archive.org is a really easy way to get around that for static content while also archiving it for future generations!)
Gmane is the only way to reply to messages on list (Score:5, Informative)
None of the other list archives (which aren't as good as gmane anyway) allow you do this.
Glimmer of hope (Score:3, Insightful)
It sounds like Lars (owner/creator) is burned out by the ordeal but a handoff of GMANE might be possible [lwn.net]. No matter what, I hope Lars is rewarded for all the effort he put into GMANE - it's a fantastic tool.