I did check, though. I found a free, open news server with comp.lang.python after 6 that didn't work. Unfortunately, the one I found is read-only. I'll have to do some more looking if I want to participate in the newsgroup. I set it up in Thunderbird.
I read and post to this and other Python lists via news.gmane.org (free) with Thunderbird. It mirrors 1000s of technical mail lists, including 200+ with 'python'. I believe it therefore has less spam than c.l.p (ie, minus whatever gets filtered out by the pipermail at python.org). First post to any list requires a response to an email. Uptime is pretty good.
-- Terry Jan Reedy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
