Re: [PLUG] Replacement mailing list idea

[Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org>]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2016 at 07:12:41PM -0400, JP Vossen wrote:
> Haven't thought about this much, have you?  ;-)
> 
> Seriously, I like the push and UI arguments the most, but that's all great
> stuff and I agree 100%.

*chuckle*  Well, as I like to say, this isn't my first day on the job. ;)

Occasionally I take criticism on this argument saying that mailing lists
are outdated.  But that's misguided for two reasons.

First, they're not.  (Neither is Usenet, BTW, you just have to know where
to look.)

Second, having spent pretty much my entire career using and supporting
and sometimes developing technology, I'm not opposed to "new".  But for
it to supplant "old", it actually has to be better.  Merely being "new"
is insufficient.

And many things that are new and shiny also come with horrible security
and privacy baggage.  Some of those same things come with gotchas
that aren't immediately evident. (Of course they aren't: it's in the
interest of their backers to conceal them.)  The open-source community in
general and Linux in particular aren't served well by these: we thrive
on open discussion, on portable discussion, on archivable discussion,
on searchable discussion.  We are best served by hosting our own discussions
using our own software using open formats and open standards.

Will something better come along?  Oh, probably.  In one sense it already
has: look at Mailman 3.  It's an evolutionary step, an interesting experiment.
I look forward to seeing how that experiment goes and learning from it.

---rsk


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