Usenet
Usenet is one of the oldest distributed computer communications networks. It consists of discussion groups called "newsgroups", in which servers propagate messages in a peer-to-peer fashion, and clients connect to servers to read and post to newsgroups. Communication (both client and server) takes place via Network News Transfer Protocol, or NNTP: this application-layer protocol is analogous to, but different (and older) than, the ubiquitous HyperText Transfer Protocol, aka HTTP.
Access to Usenet is normally tolled: If you pay a fee, you may purchase real NNTP access to a Usenet server, and connect your own client software (and trade large files at binary groups), though there are also free methods to view UseNet and even post on a limited basis. Usenet's primary relevance to NetHack is the release of previous versions through the network, with the last such version released being NetHack 3.1.3 in July 1993.
Google Groups formerly provided support for posting on Usenet until February 22, 2024, and posts made before the end of support can still be viewed through the site. While this allows access to many old NetHack releases, Google Groups is considered to be of little use for preserving them nowadays, due in part to factors such as their rendering of whitespaces causing patches to be displayed and/or rendered improperly.
The Internet Archive has archives of many groups, including the ones listed here. The archives are ZIP files, each containing a single "mbox" file, which contains the posts as messages in a big text format.
Usenet hierarchy
The Usenet hierarchy tree listed here is restricted to those groups, past or present, that have some substantial connection to NetHack:
- comp.
- comp.sources.
- comp.sources.games (archive)
- comp.sources.
- rec.
- rec.games.
- rec.games.hack (obsolete) (archive)
- rec.games.roguelike.
- rec.games.
- net. (obsolete; see Great Renaming. All known versions of Hack were posted here)
- net.sources.
- net.sources.games (archive)
- net.sources.
