Re: "This bug report will be sent to the Free Software Foundation..."

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Mon, 22 Jan 2001, Greg A. Woods wrote:

> > Sending email exposes the sender exactly as posting a news message.  No 
> > more, no less.
> 
> Literally, yes.  Practically, no.
> 
> Unless the user is familiar with the GNU Mailing lists and the fact that
> the bug reports got to thos lists, they may not even be aware that
> anyone outside of the FSF will see their report.

Most people who read gnu.emacs.bug via the mailing list (like I am)
are ``outside of the FSF'' because most of them are volunteers.

Anyone can subscribe to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.  When you subscribe, no
one asks for any credentials.

> After all the current
> message says explicitly that the report will be sent "to the FSF", and
> no hint is given that it's really a public mailing list with world-wide
> distribution *and* cross-posting to usenet.

The OP's point was that he would like to know about the news group.
My point was that there's no difference between a news group and a
mailing list as far as exposure goes.  A public email address is the
hint that the message is not landing on someone's private mailbox.

> Furthermore even though a public mailing list is indeed very public,
> unless it's readily available on various search engines (in the case of
> bug-gnu-emacs this is true, but this is not generally true of all public
> mailing lists), it's not nearly as widely indexed and searchable as even
> a GNUsenet posting.

My experience and data disagree with this.