Last release 18 years ago, $HOMEPAGE redirects to github, last activity there was eight years ago, and the issue tracker is full of equally as old unanswered requests for it to update its gTLD list (shipped version is nigh useless and has been for a long time). The jwhois.conf in the repo is substantially more complete than the one in the release, but IMO throwing that in $FILESDIR isn't a healthy solution at this point. The latest issue (gh#32) hints at net-misc/whois as a replacement, which seems very much alive and well.
I put a last rite proposal in PR
