It's an open list, but rarely abused. It is sponsored and hosted by writer/artist/musician Michael Stutz, whose work often appears in Wired News.

Sample posts:

Question: hi linart. my name is glade and i'm pretty new to computers in general and linux in particular. i'm a trained classical pianist and i believe that computers have a vast musical potential which i'm very interested in tapping into. i hope this mailing list will help me to keep abreast of developments in the linux music world.

Answer: Well, if you don't know this, the best place to keep abreast of developments of linux music *software* is here:

http://sound.lovebead.com/ ...which is actually a mirror of http://www.bright.net/~dlphilp/linux_soundapps.html

The variety of stuff is quite bewildering. I don't have time to check out all of it, much less use it!

This list is so low-volume that you can subscribe to it for a month and think it's dead. Then, just when you've given up, a series of interesting posts pop up. Well worth subscribing to. Introduce yourself even if you don't have any immediate questions to ask, or answers for anyone else at the moment. It's a friendly group, and someone will surely respond to your greeting.