HCPP20 - JASON EVANS - Revitalizing Usenet
Channel: Paralelní Polis
Date: 2021-07-10

The Big-8 newsgroups are those that begin with comp., misc., news., rec., sci., soc., talk., and humanities. They have been the backbone of much of the Usenet since the 1980s. These newsgroups are maintained by the Big-8 Management Board. In 2015, a new board was voted in. The term for a board member is 18 months. By late 2017 the entire board had either resigned or let their terms expire. Since then, no new newsgroups have been created, no abandoned newsgroups have been removed, and no other maintenance has been done.

This was surely a sign that Usenet, the once home to Cypherpunks and the place of the birth of Linux is dying.

In late 2019, three people came together on Reddit and began working with the former board members to put in a new board and to draw attention again to the benefits of Usenet. There is no reason for it to die. In fact, it should be protected as one of the most important living artifacts of Internet history. Not in a museum, but a living active organ of the internet. This is our story to bring back the Big-8 Management Board and to breathe new life into Usenet.

▲▲▲

JASON EVANS

Jason is a training engineer with SUSE Linux in Prague. He specializes in writing training materials for container-based applications including Docker, Kubernetes, and Cloud Foundry. He is also deeply interested in keeping speech free even in places where it is illegal and providing de-centralizing communications to those who need it.

▲▲▲

Paralelní Polis is a one-­of-­a-­kind nonprofit organization that brings together art, social sciences, and modern technologies. The ideas of liberty, independence, and innovative thinking, and development of society are the main underlying foundations the whole project is built upon. The project intends to remain state-free as it operates entirely without support from the government, and most of the funds come from voluntary contributions of our donors and partly from commercial activities such as running a unique co-­working space and the world’s first bitcoin-­only cafe.

▲▲▲

Facebook: vejdiven
Twitter: Paralelni_polis
Instagram: vejdiven
E-Mail: studio@paralelnipolis.cz
Web: www.hcpp.cz
Merch: www.paralelnipolis.cz/shop