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

[mike stump <mrs at windriver dot com>]

> 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.

> However, one of the lists used by the listserv administrator is one
> created by an outfit that calls itself "the 510 software group".
> This is not a list of specific offenders; instead, it is a list of
> large blocks of addresses.

Welcome to how blacklists work.  Anyway, the extended discussion of
the details of how they work is beyond the scope of this list I
suspect.  news.admin.net-abuse.email might be a better place to learn
and discuss such things.

> In particular, the list policy explicitly states that it blacklists
> a large block of addresses of Sprint customers, on the grounds that
> the list manager has some gripe with Sprint.

You trivialize the matter. They host a certain category of spammer or
spam helper and they were listed for this action.  This is how
blacklists work.


We expect a few yelps from time to time from people that are impacted.
But, as you have discovered, there usually are fairly trivial ways to
get around the blocks.  This is as designed.