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FAQ: SCO UNIX newsgroups and mailing lists

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Ed Hew

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Feb 5, 2003, 8:08:03 AM2/5/03
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Archive-name: sco/newsgroups-faq
Posting-Frequency: bi-monthly
X-Version: 4.3.1a
X-Maintainer: Ed Hew <ed...@xenitec.on.ca>
X-Original: Fri May 10 12:17:43 EDT 1991
X-Revised: Mon Jan 21 00:43:59 EST 2002


Evolution of SCO newsgroups and Mailing Lists
---------------------------------------------

Current SCO Newsgroups: Current SCO Mailing lists
---------------------- -------------------------
comp.unix.sco.announce sco...@xenitec.on.ca
comp.unix.sco.misc sco...@xenitec.on.ca
comp.unix.sco.programmer sco...@xenitec.on.ca
comp.unix.unixware.announce sco...@xenitec.on.ca
comp.unix.unixware.misc sco...@xenitec.on.ca
comp.unix.xenix.sco sco...@xenitec.on.ca

A Bit of History:
----------------

Many readers enjoyed the opportunity to obtain and contribute useful
information on SCO Open Desktop since 1990 through the ancestral USENET
newsgroup sco.opendesktop or its companion mailing list. Similarly,
there was a demonstrated need for an information and discussion forum
for SCO products in general.

Knowledge of the proponent and creation date of the comp.unix.xenix.sco
newsgroup is lost in antiquity; I'm pretty sure it was circa 1987.

Various mailing lists were created between 1989 and 1991 as SCO UNIX
and then SCO OpenDesktop were released. SCO announced that their
previously internal sco.opendesktop newsgroup would become available
for public propagation as of Apr 26, 1990. A companion bi-directionally
gated "scoodt" mailing list was coincidently implemented. Years later,
"scoodt" was merged with the "scogen" mailing list.

With the increasing demand for accessibility and for additional SCO
newsgroups, many current contributors including those who have been
active in circulating SCO related newsgroups and mailing lists felt
that the readership would be best served by creating a biz.sco.*
hierarchy to improve propagation (and hence availability) worldwide.

biz.sco.{opendesktop,general,announce} were "newgrouped" May 1, 1991
in accordance with accepted procedure within the "biz" hierarchy.
Given the content, this change relocated the "opendesktop" newsgroup
to a more proper place within the established usenet news hierarchy
and added the new "announce" and "general" groups. Companion mailing
lists were implemented. The former "sco-...@uunet.uu.net" was
merged with "scogen" on Aug 1, 1991. The biz.sco.* newsgroups were
replaced with the comp.unix.sco.* hierarchy on Apr 22, 1995.

The biz.sco.binaries and biz.sco.sources moderated newsgroups were
created on June 1, 1992 to respectively accommodate SCO Xenix, UNIX
and OpenDesktop specific binaries and source code. Their purpose
since been superseded by various anonymous FTP sites; see:
ftp://ftp.celestial.com/README.sco-sites .

biz.sco.magazine was newgrouped Dec 14, 1992, to provide a discussion
area for the readers, writers and publishers of the original SCO
Magazine and now SCO World Magazine. It was superseded by
comp.unix.sco.misc on Apr 22, 1995.

The biz.univel.misc newsgroup was created in October 1993. It was
replaced by comp.unix.unixware when Novell purchased USL, and later
split into comp.unix.unixware.announce and comp.unix.unixware.misc
in April 1995. With the Dec 6, 1995 SCO acquisition of the UnixWare
and UNIX SysV Release 4 technology from Novell, comp.unix.unixware.misc
continues as the proper forum for UnixWare discussions. UnixWare
announcements are now posted to comp.unix.sco.announce. The
comp.unix.unixware.announce newsgroup is currently unused and will
likely be removed eventually.

biz.sco.vtcl replaced biz.sco.wserver (created Sep 15, 1993) as the
discussion newsgroup for the revised version of the SCO "Visual Tcl"
technology formerly referred to as the "Widget Server" on Sep 5, 1994.
It was in turn replaced by comp.unix.sco.programmer on Apr 22, 1995.

The RFD for the migration of biz.sco.* to comp.unix.sco.* was posted
on Dec 13 1994. The resulting CFV was posted Mar 22, 1995 and passed
the vote on April 14, 1995. Official newgroup cmsg's went out within
a few days. Corresponding backwards compatible newsgroup<>mailing-list
gateways were implemented on Apr 22, 1995. The old biz.sco.* newsgroups
were removed on June 3, 1995.

The comp.unix.unixware.misc bi-directional news<>mail gateway was
implemented on Feb 19, 1997.

The comp.unix.xenix.sco bi-directional news<>mail gateway was
implemented on May 4, 1997.

Long time subscribers should now direct their postings as follows:

Old: Current:
--- -------
biz.sco.announce } comp.unix.sco.announce
comp.unix.unixware.announce } comp.unix.sco.announce
biz.univel.misc comp.unix.unixware.misc
biz.sco.general } comp.unix.sco.misc
biz.sco.magazine } comp.unix.sco.misc
biz.sco.opendesktop } comp.unix.sco.misc
biz.sco.vtcl comp.unix.sco.programmer
comp.unix.xenix.sco comp.unix.xenix.sco


Newsgroups and Mailing Lists:
----------------------------

Subject to the USENET NEWS hierarchies carried by your upstream feed,
you are able to subscribe to the following:

Newsgroup mailing list subscription
--------- -------------------------
comp.unix.sco.announce scoann-...@xenitec.on.ca
comp.unix.sco.misc scomsc-...@xenitec.on.ca
comp.unix.sco.programmer scoprg-...@xenitec.on.ca
comp.unix.unixware.misc scouwr-...@xenitec.on.ca
comp.unix.xenix.sco scoxnx-...@xenitec.on.ca

You are _strongly_ encouraged to obtain the comp.* newsgroups via USENET
NEWS mechanisms vrs email. Should comp.unix.sco.*, comp.unix.xenix.sco
or comp.unix.unixware.misc not be locally available, please check with
your local newsadmin or have them request a feed from their provider.
Anyone having difficulty arranging a news feed for these newsgroups
is welcome to email the undersigned and I'll do my best to help.
We also offer all required software in source code form via anonymous
FTP and UUCP, as do many archive sites. If, after having explored all
options, you are still unable to find a newsfeed for comp.unix.sco.*,
comp.unix.unixware.misc or comp.unix.xenix.sco, you may subscribe to
these mailing lists.

Be aware that the traffic volume in comp.unix.sco.misc often exceeds
50 articles *daily*, thus you should be prepared to have your mailbox
flooded to this extent when subscribing to the gated "scomsc" mailing
list. Most people find that news is a much better mechanism than email
to handle this sort of volume.

The comp.unix.sco.*, comp.unix.unixware.misc, comp.unix.xenix.sco,
and sco.public.* discussion newsgroups are bi-directionally gated to
companion mailing lists. The comp.unix.sco.announce newsgroup, being
moderated, is uni-directionally gated to its companion mailing list.
Anyone without access to USENET NEWS but who does have a UUCP or
Internet mail feed can still participate fully using email. Mailing
list subscribers should send their request to the appropriate "-request"
mailing list subscription address above, including the correct command
in the message body of their request.

Please use the format:
Add: mailing-list: your_working_email_address (Your Real Name)
Examples:
Add: scoann: your_l...@site.do.main (Your Real Name)
Add: scomsc: jo...@foobar.com (Joe Smith)

Deletions are handled the same way, simply substitute "Delete:" for
"Add:", ensuring that you use the exact same address you subscribed with.
Subscribers receive a mailing list introduction and a copy of this FAQ
when their request is processed. Mailing list subscriptions are free,
subject to whatever arrangements you may have with your network and/or
Internet service providers.

Mailing-list Subscriber and Posting Problems:
--------------------------------------------

If you don't receive an acknowledgment within a few days, it's likely
that someone, somewhere, is bouncing mail replies to you, and would do
the same with mailing list traffic for you. Check your connectivity,
paying particular attention to your DNS records which determine routing.
You must resolve your problems before trying to subscribe again.
Similarly, should you experience a sudden and prolonged drop to zero
volume on the mailing lists, this typically indicates that we are no
longer able to find a working route to your site. We lose a handful
of subscribers this way each month.

Addresses that cause a severe deluge of error messages directed at
the mailing list administrator will not be automatically reinstated.
Provide a stable address for the appropriate local network or ISP
administrator along with that person's explicit permission to accept
automatic redirection of error notifications that might result from
resubscription of the problem address. Such problems are typically
solved only when that administrator receives the errors as they happen.

If you are trying to resubscribe an address that was removed due to
such problems, please include a stable redirection address with your
resubscription request. Otherwise your request will be substantially
delayed until such time as the human mailing list administrator can
find time to personally deal with your request by asking you for that
redirection address for your error messages.

Due to the unfortunate advent of SPAM, hosts that originate or relay
SPAM are blocked from smtp access to the mailing list hub site using
all the RBL mechanisms available at any point in time. If you find
yourself subject to this restriction, you must ask your administrator
to resolve the root cause of the problem by putting appropriate
anti-spamming provisions in place and notifying the Internet community
and various RBL maintainers that this has been done so that smtp-
blocking can be lifted. Where this is not feasible, the only solution
is to connect to an ISP that does not support SPAM activities. See
URL: http://spam.abuse.net for details.

You may correct problems caused by operating an open smtp relay
with the free implementation of Obtuse smtpd for SCO MMDF (and
other environments), available via:
ftp://ftp.xenitec.on.ca/pub/antispam/obtuse-smtpd.tar.gz

To further protect mailing lists hosted on the hub site from SPAM,
smtp connection requests must come from hosts which have PTR resource
records available to permit address resolution using IN-ADDR.ARPA,
otherwise expect smtp connection requests from them to be refused.
Those who would steal your resources and time are commonly known to
use throw-away unresolvable raw IP numbers, and are thus routinely
and mostly automatically blocked.

Only articles which adhere to the newsgroup charters are authorized
to traverse the SCO mail<>news gateways. Articles which abuse the
gateways by blantantly ignoring the respective newsgroup charter(s)
or are UCE, UBE or SPAM are subject to cancellation.

The Charters: What's in the newsgroups (and gated mailing lists):
-----------------------------------------------------------------

comp.unix.sco.announce (Moderated by Ed Hew <ed...@xenitec.on.ca>)
Product, service, and business announcements of reasonable interest
to the SCO community of developers, distributors, resellers,
consultants, administrators and end-users, submitted by:
- SCO,
- third party software and hardware developers, SCO-specific
service providers, and authors of freely available software.
This explicitly includes SCO supplement information (SLS, TLS, EFS, etc.)
Blatant and/or irrelevant commercial "ads" will continue to be rejected.
Articles should be emailed to the moderator at: scoa...@xenitec.on.ca

comp.unix.sco.misc
Questions, answers, comments and discussion about past, present and
future SCO and related third party products and services, not more
specifically covered by one of the other newsgroups, including but
not limited to:
- SCO UNIX operating system,
- networking products (TCP/IP, NFS, LAN Manager, IPX/SPX, DCE, OSI),
- graphical products (X server and clients),
- DOS Merge,
- The Open Desktop and Open Server operating environments which
incorporate most of the above components.
- SCO's older applications, when running on SCO UNIX.
- SCO's support and other policies.
- Third party hardware, software and services.
- SCO environment specific "help wanted" postings.
Commercial advertisements are explicitly forbidden.

comp.unix.sco.programmer
Questions, answers, comments and discussion about past, present and
future SCO development system products and related software and issues,
including but not limited to:
- UNIX and Open Desktop development systems,
- SCO Visual TCL.
- DCE developers toolkit,
- Device Driver Writer's toolkit/Advanced Hardware Developer Kit
- Public domain, shareware, and third party development tools
of use in SCO operating environments.
- SCO software distribution mastering toolkits
- API questions, compiler behavior, header files, libraries,
binary formats, manifest defines, etc.
- Porting.
Commercial advertisements are explicitly forbidden.

comp.unix.unixware.announce: (obsolete)
(Moderated by Evan Leibovitch <ev...@telly.org>)
[The creator and moderator of comp.unix.unixware.announce advises
that it is now redundant and has suggested its formal removal given
that pertinent announcements are posted to comp.unix.sco.announce.]

comp.unix.unixware.misc
This is a general-purpose forum for discussion about products of
Novells Unix Systems Group, primarily its implementation of Unix
for PC-architecture systems sold under the name UnixWare.
Appropriate product and service announcements should now be sent
to comp.unix.sco.announce.
[SCO acquired the UnixWare product line from Novell in 1995.]

comp.unix.xenix.sco
The canonical charter is: XENIX versions from the Santa Cruz Operation.
The original full charter is unavailable. Anyone with a copy of the
original charter, RFD or CFV is encouraged to send it to me.

Full SCO newsgroup archives for comp.unix.sco.* and their biz.sco.*
precursors live under URL: ftp://ftp.xenitec.on.ca/pub/news/
___________

The undersigned has historically facilitated the evolution of the SCO
newsgroup namespace. Suggestions for additional SCO newsgroups and/or
mailing lists should be emailed to the address below.
--
Ed Hew <ed...@xenitec.on.ca> http://www.xenitec.on.ca
SCO newsgroup godfather ; CA Domain Registry: http://www.registry.ca
XeniTec Consulting Services && Standard International Training Centers
comp.unix.sco.announce moderator: some FAQs, USENET biz authority, etc.

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