Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu writes:

This is *so* bass-ackwards it isn't funny.

You want facts, yet you read NANOG? To call what's been posted to this thread "wildly inaccurate" would give it far more credit than it has earned. (Not picking on Valdis in particular, he and I are on the same side after all.)

Open relays were the norm until people realized that they were getting abused. The clueful were already closing their relays back then. Vixie started providing the MAPS service because clueful people wanted to protect themselves against idiots.

The list that netside found itself listed on was MAPS RSS, which was originally created by Al Iverson under the name RRSS. MAPS gave it, and then later Al himself, a new home. Vixie (that's me) was never personally involved -- MAPS is a limited liability company founded by Vixie (me again) and Dave Rand.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure that both ORBS and the now-defunct DorkSlayers databases actually pre-date the MAPS project.

ORBS is the name Alan Brown switched to when I complained that calling his project the DorkSlayers RBL was leading a lot of people to send hate mail to MAPS (the original "RBL") about sites that were actually on Alan's list.

So obviously there was a demand for the service before Vixie started it up.

Vixie (me, still) started the RBL as an independent project shortly before MAPS was cofounded by Vixie (hi!) and Rand. RRSS was created independently by Al Iverson at about the same time as Alan Brown started DorkSlayers. RRSS became the MAPS RSS some time afterward.

And as was already pointed out, spam-l and news.admin.net-abuse.email are probably more appropriate fora for this discussion...

Right. On the other hand I don't read those since I'm not a day to day part of MAPS or indeed of the anti-spam community. Dave Rand is MAPS's executive director now (following his resignation from MFN/Abovenet a while back) and while he reads the spam fora I don't think he's on NANOG any more. Comments about the MAPS RSS, or indeed anything else about MAPS, should most likely be sent to him (dlr@mail-abuse.org) if you want to be sure he reads them.