Google is announcing the end of support for its Usenet client and servers in February 2024. This is a significant turning point because Usenet predates the Internet. Much of the Internet and, later, the WWW, was designed and built around Usenet discussions. That includes Linus Torvalds' now famous announcement about his then hobby, which he asserted at the time would not be big and professional like GNU:
What do I need to do?
If you don't actively engage with Usenet content, you don't need to do anything. Current Usenet users will need to do two things before February 22, 2024 if they want to continue engaging with Usenet content:
- Find a new Usenet client. Several free and paid alternatives are available, both web-based and application-based. To find a client, do a web search for "how do I find a usenet text client"
- Find a new public Usenet server. The new client you choose will likely have a default server or a set of curated options for you. If not, to find a server, do a web search for "public NNTP servers."
Because Usenet is a distributed system, you do not need to migrate data. All of the Usenet content you can access today on Google Groups should already be synced to the new server you choose. After you select a new client and server, you can reselect the groups you're interested in.
For the time being, you will be able to continue to view and search for the many decades of historical Usenet content posted before February 22, 2024 which Google acquired itself combined with the vast, historically important archives from Deja News.
Usenet remains a distributed, decentralized, peer-to-peer messaging network. The news readers contact an NNTP server in a client-server relation but the NNTP servers themselves communicated as peers. One thorn in the side for the powers which be is that it is essentially uncensorable. In the old days it was sufficient to get a floppy or two across the border to complete the circuit via sneakernet. One downside, sometimes humorous, was that propagation delays resulting from the distributed, decentralized nature of the peer-to-peer network meant that sometimes one saw a response hours or days before the original message showed up.
Previously:
(2016) Gmane is Under Threat
Related Stories
Gmane is in danger of disappearing. It's an important gateway between mailing lists and usenet. The Gmane sysadmin is apparently getting too many threats, and it has made him ill. Here's his announcement and ensuing discussion.
Is there anyone that could help gmane stay alive?
-- hendrik
Wikipedia summarizes Gmane as follows:
Gmane (pronounced "mane") is an e-mail to news gateway. 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.
Alexa reports Gmane has a global rank of 12,037 (up 280).
[At the time of accepting this story, I am getting a 523 error when attempting to reach http://gmane.org/ --Ed.]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by pTamok on Wednesday December 20, @07:30AM (3 children)
I'm still irritated at Google ruining DejaNews.
A lot of people on Usenet are very happy at this announcement, as it will reduce the level of spam that comes from Google Groups. It might even cause an increase in Usenet usage.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by corey on Wednesday December 20, @09:15PM (2 children)
I don’t use Usenet, did years ago however. Is it worthwhile checking out nowadays or is it on the decline? Got any group suggestions?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Thursday December 21, @12:19AM (1 child)
I haven't used Usenet recently because the (rather niche) text-only groups I used to frequent got deluged with off-topic messages, and the die-hards that were left tended to off-topic discussions.
Some of the best were moderated groups.
With the loss of visibility via Google, I hope that the off-topic stuff will die down. It got tiring dealing with all the messages promoting drugs (for example) in groups dedicated to entirely different topics.
I'll probably find a client and dip a toe in the water again after Google have gone.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Thursday December 21, @10:11AM
I would guess that the flooding of the groups with off topic and illegal subjects is intentional and has a twofold purpose. The first is to drive people away, old timers and newcomers alike. The second is to ruin the reputation of the group specifically and Usenet in general, especially with LEO if possible. We see that a lot over in various self-hosted IRC channels as well. The tactics are identical. The same tactics were used against the old "green site" as well.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by drussell on Wednesday December 20, @10:47AM (5 children)
Ummm no, it didn't. It predates the World Wide Web but not the internet.
I predate the WWW also, but certainly not the internet.
Many FidoNet sysops like myself even hooked our BBSes up to the newfangled "internet," expanding on the intercommunications provided by standard NetMail and EchoMail systems we had been using for years, usually with some sort of a UUCP gateway as a relay.
On my board at 1:134/45, you could essentially address me as drussell@.f45.n134.z1.fidonet.org
Now that I think about it, I really should fire my BBS back up just for the hell of it. I'm not too sure how Y2K compliant QuickBBS is, though...
(Score: 3, Informative) by darkfeline on Wednesday December 20, @10:52AM (1 child)
I'm somewhat certain that Usenet does indeed predate the Internet. It used UUCP before ARPANET was a thing.
It's possible that Usenet wouldn't have been invented after the Internet, since its base protocol is shaped by how asynchronous communication was.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Informative) by drussell on Wednesday December 20, @11:27AM
No, ARPANET / "The Internet" long predates Usenet.
The "Internet" is still the same computer network as "ARPANET," despite the fact that we changed what we called it in the late 80s. I was there, I remember this.
The technical committees / sanctioning body, whatever you want to call it changed and thus "ARPANET" technically ceased to exist, but we still all used the same network, regardless of what you call it.
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Wednesday December 20, @11:02AM (1 child)
I see your point. Yes, there were networks and internets (small 'i') prior to The Internet. However, with formal names the network you refer to was probably either the ARPANet or NSFNet. The Internet as such did not show up until the early 1980s. The year 1983 was the cutover to TCP/IP which most consider the defining aspect of The Internet (capital 'I'). Usenet was from 1979 and as such pre-dates The Internet.
See https://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/ [zakon.org]
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday December 20, @11:40AM
It was still technically called ARPANET when my BBS was connected via an "@...fidonet.org" address to seamlessly exchange messages and files.
(Score: 3, Funny) by cereal_burpist on Friday December 22, @05:55AM
(Score: 2) by rufty on Thursday December 21, @02:20PM
Slightly offtopic. There's a ham radio internet-alike, the Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network [arednmesh.org]. It seems that an asynchronous store-and-forward service like NNTP would be very useful. I've had a bit of a try running a test server; innd is a bit heavy-weight for a few messages a month and leafnode keeps running into internet-based assumptions about naming conventions and DNS. Anything similar going on out there I could get ideas from?