Most Internet sites are always seeking ways to improve the usage of the limited bandwidth awailable across their link to the Internet.
Should more than one user subscribe to the same mailing list, there is going to be traffic duplication. If there are a number of such duplications - or the traffic on the lists is high, the consumption of bandwidth increases.
By subscribing the site to a list (if this is allowed by the list owner) and 'gating' the email traffic to the local news server, it is possible to make mailing lists accessible to all site users, or, using the security features of 'innd', to limit the access to certain users.
Such a site subscription (particularly if there are a number of high traffic lists) can make worthwhile savings in bandwidth usage.
Reading list traffic in news reader also offers users the advantages of threading (which is not available in many mail user agents) and keeps their mail 'inbox' free for possibly more urgent, personal email.
This mini-HOWTO describes setting up the 'mail2news.pl' script to accomplish this.
The author has been unable to find mail2news.pl on CPAN (the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) - but it may just have been overlooked. It is however on sunsite.unc.edu - somewhere - and also on ftp.redhat.com.
As this Perl script is not lengthy, it is appended to this howto.