Re: Are the GCC lists intended to be open lists?

[Joel Sherrill <joel dot sherrill at OARcorp dot com>]

mike stump wrote:
> 
> > Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 11:02:59 -0500 (EST)
> > From: Paul Koning <pkoning@equallogic.com>
> > To: gcc@gcc.gnu.org
> 
> > It was my impression that the GCC mailing lists are intended to be
> > open lists -- in other words, anyone can post without having to be a
> > subscriber.
> 
> We participate in actively discouraging spam.  This participation has
> consequences.  The consequences are to deny email from certain sites.
> This has been the stated policy for a long while, and remains a good
> policy.  In short, we don't get paid enough to put up with spam, so to
> increase our enjoyment, we disallow some types of email.
> 
> > As of yesterday, that is no longer the case.
> 
> The general policy is not new.  The basis for the general policy in
> your case isn't new.  What you have discovered is either a change in
> state of some specific IP addresses, or a change in state of which
> particular lists are used.  This is an expected consequence of the
> existing stated policy.
> 
> > I discovered that a "spam prevention" scheme was put into effect
> > that goes way beyond what is reasonable.
> 
> You can ask blackhole@five-ten-sg.com to add in an exemption for your
> email host.  Have yo done so?  If not, why not?  Explain the
> situation.  Explain that the gcc list uses his blacklist, explain that
> you are that host, explain that your IP address is static (I hope it
> is), explain that you don't spam, and that you wish to be exempted.
> It can't hurt.  If you can also tell him that you yelled at your
> sprint rep, that might be enough to get an exemption.

There is another easy way to find your domain on one of these
blacklists.  Some probe your host to ensure that it has the mail
services properly configured so it is not an open relay.  So
far everytime I have tracked down what was thought to be an
invalidly blocked domain, it turned out to be an incorrectly
configured mail server.  It has tended to be just after a 
major upgrade or a new server was installed and something
was just not configured correctly.

This may not be your particular case but be warned that 
sometimes being blacklisted is legitimate even if you are
not a spammer. :)

-- 
Joel Sherrill, Ph.D.             Director of Research & Development
joel@OARcorp.com                 On-Line Applications Research
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