Are the GCC lists intended to be open lists?

[Paul Koning]

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. 

As of yesterday, that is no longer the case.  I discovered that a
"spam prevention" scheme was put into effect that goes way beyond what
is reasonable.  (The symptom was that suddenly my submissions to the
list were being rejected.)

The problem lies in the choice of lists used for this purpose.  There
are spam blocker schemes that list known offenders, open relays, and
things of that sort.  Blocking those makes sense -- for one thing,
there is a reasonable way to get off the list.

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.

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.  (Note: he didn't block
Sprint -- he blacklisted third parties who happen to use the "wrong"
ISP.) 

So what has happened is that the GCC lists are now no longer open to a
large group of Internet users, whose only offense is that they happen
to use Sprint as their ISP.  Is this the sort of policy that should be
in place?

I tried to discuss this with Chris Faylor, who appears to be the
person who put this policy in place, but he told me that he is not
interested in discussing it or explaining it.

So I guess I should ask the list if the intent is for this list to be
open or closed.  If the answer is "open" then I would suggest that the
listserv administration should implement that intent.

	 paul