[ih] distributed network control: Usenet

[Greg Skinner]

On Jul 20, 2021, at 3:45 PM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
> The Usenet had no central point of control, and was contemporaneous with
> the ARPANET and early Internet.  Its software was even rewritten several
> times by different parties (e.g. A News, B News, C News, Notesfiles,
> NNTP).  Its global discussion groups (net.foo) were evolved by mutual
> agreement (comp.foo, sci.bar, etc) and then later successfully forked
> (alt) when the primary sites feared hosting discussions that others
> wanted to have (e.g. on sex and drugs).
> 
> Does anybody know the status of the Usenet today?  I got off it
> years ago.

BTW, it’s available via Google Groups <https://groups.google.com/>.  Some newsgroups go back to the early 1980s.

—gregbo