Free FAQ
Joe Curry
Subject: The free.* FAQ
Date: Monday, November 15, 1999 6:00 AM
Archive-name: free/charter
Posting-frequency: twice monthly
Last-modified: 1998/08/05
Version: 1.0
URL: http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/faqs/free.html
Everything is permitted.
Nothing is forbidden."
The Free FAQ
by Tim Skirvin
This document is an introduction to free.* and the issues
surrounding it. It assumes that you have at least some basic
knowledge of Usenet history and administration; if you don't,
well, either go get them and come back, or accept that there's
going to be some parts of this FAQ that you don't understand.
All standard disclaimers apply, void where prohibited, you
may cancel at any time for a full refund, trust no one,
Table of Contents
I. General Questions
1. What is free.*?
2. Why was it made?
3. How can I get access to free.*?
4. What groups are available?
II. Policy Questions
1. So, free.* has no rules then?
2. What about [fill-in-the-blank] cancels?
3. Won't the groups become massively abuse-ridden?
4. How are the rules enforced?
5. What about "(Free == absolutely NO rules)"?
III. User Questions
1. Why would I want to read free.*?
2. Can I post [fill-in-the-blank] here?
3. Can I make my own group?
IV. Other Questions
1. Can I issue cancels for articles cross-posted out of
free.*?
2. Can I make my own hierarchy?
3. Why did you negotiate with terrorists?
V. Other documents
1. The free.* charter
2. The Freedom Knights
3. Other hierarchies
I. General Questions
1. What is free.*?
free.* is a Usenet hierarchy where the only rule is
"do whatever you want as long as you're not destroying somebody
else's words". If you know Usenet already, you can think of it as
a more chaotic alt.*; if you don't, know Usenet, the closest
analogy is probably to a true anarchy.
2. Why was it made?
By the time free.* was created on July 18, 1998, the idea of free.*
had been kicked around for years - in fact, the idea had already
been tried once in 1994, though it met with limited success.
The idea of a hierarchy was appealing to many, from users that
wanted a place where they wouldn't be watched over to administrators
that wanted to experiment with a true anarchy; many others were
disgusted by the idea, fearing that it would be a barren wasteland
filled with spam populated only with kooks and morons.
Nobody had any idea who was right, and it was left at that.
The initial catalyst for the creation of free.* was a continuing
cancelwar in news.*, reportedly over the rights of users to control
their own posts. Annoyed by the cancels and reposts, Tim Skirvin,
a fairly prominent poster to news.admin.*, decided to see what he
could do about the problem, so he entered into mock negotiations
with the rogue canceller. After several aborted attempts to figure
out what the canceller wanted, Tim remembered the idea of free.*
and mentioned it off-handedly; he was genuinely surprised to find
that the canceller was actually interested in the proposal.
Confident that the hierarchy was a good idea whose time had
come, and not caring that he would probably be reviled for years
to come over his apparent negotiation, he posted a charter, sent
out a few newgroups, and declared the hierarchy open for business.
3. How can I get access to free.*?
Not too many educational or corporate news servers carry the
hierarchy; if you want to read it, you'll probably have to find
yourself a commercial provider.
Dejanews (<URL:http://www.dejanews.com/>), a free Usenet service,
carries the hierarchy; most of the other large news resellers
presumably have it, although reports are still limited. Your
best bet is probably to use one of them.
You could, of course, ask your news administrators to pick up
the hierarchy, which shouldn't be very challenging. If sufficient
interest is there, most admins will pick it up, and interest is
often determined by user requests.
4. What groups are available?
Because this is a FAQ that doesn't want to be updated every
couple of days, it's not going to list off the newsgroups in free.*
here.
Instead, check out <URL:ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/control/free>,
part of the ISC's canonical newgroup/rmgroup archive.
II. Policy Questions
1. So, free.* has no rules then?
In essence, yes. More specifically, there is one rule: anybody
can do whatever they want, as long as it doesn't destroy somebody
else's words. What this means in practice:
o No cancel messages or any derivitives thereof are allowed
within
free.*. If any are issued, they should not be honored.
o rmgroups should not be issued for any group in the free.*
hierarchy.
o Servers should not filter their free.* feeds.
Other than that, everything is allowed by the hierarchy.
2. What about [fill-in-the-blank] cancels.
Spam cancels, binary cancels, spew cancels, forgery cancels,
persoanl cancels, and in fact every form of cancel are right out.
Any filtering that needs to be done should be done on the poster-
or user-side only.
3. Won't the groups become massively abuse-ridden?
Probably. Then again, this might not be that much of a change -
much of alt.* is already effectively flooded, thanks to the
tenacity of the spammers, and even alt.sex.* survives in some
fashion or another. In addition, the prohibitions on filtering do
not extend to complaints about abusive users; service providers are
still free to cancel accounts for usage violations as they see fit.
And, of course, it's possible that the spammers will recognize a
good thing when they see it and let the hierarchy survive.
free.* will probably have more spam than most hierarchies; few
people doubt that. What's in question is whether or not it will
be able to survive it - and, given a little ingenuity and hard work,
there's few reasons it wouldn't be able to.
4. How are the rules enforced?
Well, in essence, they aren't. Sure, it might be possible to
track down everybody that issues cancels within the hierarchy and
beat them upside the head with a clue stick, but that's hard to do
when there's nobody really in charge; all that's really possible is
to encourage people to pay attention to the hierarchy's rules or
drop the hierarchy entirely. Administrators that carry the hierarchy
are also encouraged to update their software to ignore cancels and
rmgroups within the hierarchy, which solves the problem permanently
within that server.
As for the rules regarding filtering, well, it's not really much
of a rule anyway, and it's ignored to one extent or another by just
about every server out there. It's more useful as a statement of
principles than a rule...
5. What about "(Free == absolutely NO rules)"?
*sigh* Alright, a history lesson: free.* was originally
created in late 1994 by John Palmer, during a flamewar over
alt.* creation policies. It enjoyed a brief period of
semi-popularity, before fading into almost complete obscurity
for several years. While several people continued to use the
hierarchy during this time, few noticed their crossposts; free.*
may as well have not existed.
That didn't stop the old residents from piping up and complaining
when the hierarchy was made.
The original charter for free.* was "(Free == absolutely NO rules)".
This is, of course, not entirely compatible with the current charter;
still, to most it's close enough to make no difference. While there
is a slight rift over the matter between the old and new
hierarchy residents, it's probably more practical to follow the new
rules than the old.
III. User Questions
1. Why would I want to read free.*?
In most cases, you probably don't - there isn't a whole lot of
content there, and it's a lot harder to sift the wheat from the
chaff in an unfiltered hierarchy. Still, it's got its advantages
- your posts will go out exactly as you made them, you can talk
about things just about anywhere you want to, you probably won't be
made fun of for being silly, and you can just generally do what you
want.
If any of that stuff sounds appealing to you, then I guess this
hierarchy's for you. If not, then I highly recommend you ignore it.
2. Can I post [fill-in-the-blank] here?
It depends on what you're talking about and what your ISP's
policies are. You can get away with posting spam, binaries, and
whatever else to free.* without the threat of any administrative
retaliation; you may get bitched at by your service provider,
though, and there's not too much that anybody else can do about it.
Flames, off-topic posts, cascades, and everything else is probably
going to be just ignored. Nobody's going to yell at you for forging
the approval to a moderated newsgroup, except maybe one of the
other users. Pretty much, you can do whatever you want, as long
as your admins know what's up and are okay with it.
That doesn't mean you *should* do any of this, of course. But at
least it's an option.
3. Can I make my own group?
Certainly. Just post a message that looks something like this
(headers and all):
Newsgroups: free.control,free.fishhead
Subject: cmsg newgroup free.fishhead
Approved: mu...@fishhead.fish
Control: newgroup free.fishhead
From: ro...@poly.com (Fish Head)
For your newsgroups file:
free.fishhead Eat them up, yum!
There's no guarantee that anybody will carry your group,
of course, but at least you tried. Better names will probably
ensure that more servers will carry your group, so you might want
to put some thought into it.
IV. Other Questions
1. Can I issue cancels for articles cross-posted out of free.*?
Sure. The most restictive ruleset of any newsgroup present in a
cross-posted article applies; considering that every other
hierarchy has a more restrictive ruleset than free.*, there's not
much that our policies are going to affect.
This does mean, of course, that crossposting into free.* is not a
way around standard Usenet policies. If you want your articles
to remain safe, I wouldn't recommend crossposting them out of
free.*. Period.
2. Can I make my own hierarchy?
Sure. It'd probably be a good idea if you kept it within free.*
if you want the same policies (or lack thereof) to apply to it;
however, there's really not much anybody can do to stop you from
making whatever top-level hierarchies you want.
3. Why did you negotiate with terrorists?
Oh, for Gods' sakes...look, people, free.* was created because
it was a good idea, not to be anybody's personal playground.
Any reports you may hear about me doing it for any specific
individual are a) exaggerated b) silly, and c) a damned fine
disinformation job on my part.
Furrfu.
V. Other Documents
1. The free.* charter
From the original hierarchy announcement:
free.* is a hierarchy where anything is allowed, and nothing is
forbidden. Period. There will be no cancels here, no rmgroups,
no supersedes, and no central control. If somebody wants a group,
they can create it. If somebody wants to post something, they can
post it. If somebody wants to forge something, they can forge it.
If somebody wants to do something, they can do it - as long as it
doesn't involve the destruction of somebody else's words.
There will be no spam cancels in free.*, no binary cancels, no
forgery cancels, no spew cancels, no cancels period.
Administrators are encourged to not filter the newsgroups in any
way, including server-based filters and NoCeM. Administrators
are also encourged to not honor cancel messages crossposted to
the hierarchy.
These rules will be enforced by anybody that cares to enforce
them. Considering the type of rules, this enforcement will most
likely take the form of educating people on just what free.* is
about.
Above all, free.* is about free speech without authority. Enjoy
it or ignore it. It's your choice.
2. The Freedom Knights
Many of the ideas for free.* came from years of discussions on
the Freedom Knights mailing list. The Freedom Knights are a
group dedicated to free speech on Usenet; so far as I know,
free.* is exactly what they want Usenet to be like. As such,
you might want to check out their webpages,
at <URL:http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet/>. Enjoy.
3. Other hierarchies
free.* is not the only new Usenet hierarchy to pop up over the
last couple of years.
o mod.* (<URL:http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/faqs/manif.html>)
A hierarchy for only moderated newsgroups; it's a kindof of flip-side
to free.*. Not yet started, but it probably will be fairly soon.
o net.* (<URL:http://www.usenet2.org/>)
A hierarchy that tries to work through the application of rules,
rather than a lack of them. It currently exists, is fairly popular,
and is pretty much the domain of news administrators.
--
Copyright 1998 by Tim Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu>