[ih] The Backbone Cabal

[Greg Skinner]

On Oct 2, 2025, at 4:58 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> All this UUCP chatter reminded me of the backbone cabal.  The source
> of many early Usenet conspiracy theories :-)
> 
> Is there an archive of the cabal mailing list anywhere?
> 
> I know it was a private list, but there is a *lot* of history in
> there about the development of the UUCP mail networks, and Usenet.
> It's well over 30 years since that list was active (I would guess).
> Certainly the statute of limitations has long expired for any
> transgressions contained therein.  Or even if it's too early to
> open up, a copy should be permanently archived somewhere, if a
> copy still exists.
> 
> --lyndon
> —


I don’t remember offhand, but there is a Wikipedia page about it with links to more information. [1] I remember sometime after NNTP was released, someone did an analysis of the transitive closure of paths Usenet news posts took, and determined that most were going via NNTP, instead of dialup UUCP.

--gregbo

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backbone_cabal