Spam, Bacon, Eggs & Spam (was: Re: yada $1.4M yada)

[Tim Van Holder]

> Almost all of the spam I get these days comes directly from gnu.org.
Same here.

> > Can advertisers
> > and bulk spammers be removed?
> 
> Officially, no.
> 
> After sending similar complaints months ago (Jan 23, 2001) to the FSF I
> just finally tonight got an "official" reply from the vice president of
> the FSF, Bradley Kuhn, stating (in a style typical of RMS actually) that
> they wouldn't block any e-mail, especially not based on third party RBLs
> and the like, because they might accidentally once in a blue moon block
> one poor fool's legitimate message because his MTA was accidentally
> mis-configured and accidentally became an open relay or some such.  The
> FSF folks don't seem to realise that everyone knows how to resend a
> message once they've either fixed their mailer or chosen a new service
> provider who takes more careful care of their mailers.

I agree with the FSF on this one - better let through 10 spams than block
1 important mail; similar to your argument, most everyone on gnu.org
mailing lists will also know how to configure their mailer to filter out
potential spam.

> Oddly this policy of theirs to freely re-distribute all spam to all of
> their mailing list subscribers isn't clearly stated on their web site or
> on the subscription confirmation messages they send out.
Nor does it say they block spam.

> Personally I'm going to find other forums which are managed in a much
> more responsible way and which treat their intended community with far
> more care and respect than the FSF has come to do.  I will soon be
> unsubscribing from all public gnu.org mailing lists on which I continue
> to receive spam.  I encourage everyone else to do likewise.  If everyone
> leaves it won't be very hard at all to find willing hosts for alternate
> forums in which free software topics can be discussed without intrusion
> from known spammers, open relays, and such.  In fact I'd hope most such
> new lists will be set up so that only subscribers may post freely to
> them.  If the list managers should wish to sort through unsolicited
> postings by non-subscribers and forward on only the non-spam then they'd
> obviosly be welcome to do the job!
It seems likely things will move to savannah.gnu.org soon enough; with the
forums, bug tracking, etc. available there, I'm not sure if the mailing
lists are still needed.