This NNTP server is necessary if you plan reading news with the cnews package. It has been configured so that it accesses the /var/spool/news directory to supply news to the news reader.
If you want to compile the sources yourself please keep in mind to install and compile cnews first.
Please note, that this packages requires cnews. The packages cnews is not supported by our support team. Feedback and bug fixes for nntpd are of course welcome at feedback@suse.de.