what relationship between this mail list and the python group on Google?

[Robert M. Emmons]

> what relationship between this mail list and the python group on Google?
> i saw the same info on both

Just some background.  USENET or Network News is the second oldest 
discussion forum group around.  It's been around since the 1980's or 
maybe 1970's.  The Python forum is part of that.  Incidently, the first 
discussion forum network was "mailing lists".  Often Newsgroups and 
mailing lists are gatewayed to one another to provide both types of 
access.  Some other posters said this is true for the Python forum -- I 
don't know either way.

Because Usenet discussions are so important in terms of information 
content and reference material people started to archive these.  One was 
Dejanews (spelling?) which mirrored USENET so people could search 
archives a decade or more old.  Google a few years ago took over this 
archiving and searching function which is nice.  I use google group 
searchs quite frequently.  Goggle also offers submittale and other news 
reading features also.

The point I want to make is that USENET is a unique forum system based 
on collaboration among many many internet sites that put up and agreed 
to share news groups among themselves and Google is just one participant 
in this that provides some very nice user features.  This is different 
from other forums you see on say Yahoo, AOL/Compuserve, and the like. 
Usenet is community based and not owned by any one group where the 
others are commerical.  It also tends to have more technical content 
too.  These are some of the reasons I prefer usenet.

Rob