Standardized format for news submission/sharing

[Roger Dingledine <arma@seul.org>]

I sent you mail a few days ago proposing a centralized (or at least
coordinated) Linux announcements and news list. Dave (from Threepoint),
Scoop (from Freshmeat), Nils Lohner (Debian publicity), and I have been
talking over the various options, and we'd like to add you guys to the
discussions so we can get a better sample of the current Linux news sites.

We have concluded that we should start with designing a standard format for
news, so it can be shared between news sites in an automated (or at least
semi-automated) fashion.

After that, we'll get into the issues of how to share it between
participating sites in an easy fashion. That solution is still very
far up for grabs. :) So far a centralized mysql server has been proposed
at one extreme, and an nntp-based distribution system at the other extreme.

We'd welcome some new perspectives on both issues.

Our current plan is to discuss things and solidify them for several
more days, and once we're ready I'll send another massmail to all the
companies I mailed earlier this week, and let them know about the list.
From there we'll decide if we need more publicity to get workers, or if we
can make it all happen without needing another announcement.

The list is hosted on Linux United. To subscribe, send mail to
lu-news-request@linuxunited.org with a body of "subscribe". The
list archives can be found at http://www.seul.org/archives/lu/news/
(though we'll be moving them to LU when that gets set up).

A copy of our current proposal draft can be found at
http://linuxunited.org/projects/news/news_proposal.html

Thanks for your time. I hope to hear from you soon,

--Roger (SEUL Sysarch, http://www.seul.org/)