SoylentNews

canopic jug [soylentnews.org] writes:

Google is announcing the end of support for its Usenet client and servers [google.com] 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:

1. 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"
2. 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 [soylentnews.org]

Original Submission