[asterisk-dev] Mailing List Future

[Jonathan Aquilina]

I would like to add my 2 cents here as a long tim follower of this list.

I am aware of another mailing platform for such mailing lists.

https://www.sympa.community/

Would something like this be considered as a replacement from what I am assuming this list is based on which is mailman?

Also if you do decide to upgrade the infra and mailing list. I would highly recommend it is done internally at sangoma given then there are alot of GDPR and other privacy concerns that woudl arise.


Regards,

Jonathan Aquilina



________________________________
From: asterisk-dev <asterisk-dev-bounces at lists.digium.com> on behalf of Joshua C. Colp <jcolp at sangoma.com>
Sent: Monday, December 4, 2023 14:02
To: asterisk at phreaknet.org <asterisk at phreaknet.org>
Cc: Asterisk Developers Mailing List <asterisk-dev at lists.digium.com>
Subject: Re: [asterisk-dev] Mailing List Future

On Mon, Dec 4, 2023 at 8:52 AM <asterisk at phreaknet.org<mailto:asterisk at phreaknet.org>> wrote:
I strongly object to not having an asterisk-dev list. Mailing lists are
essential for FOSS developer discussion. The majority of non-ephemeral
development discussion happens either on IRC or here on the asterisk-dev
list - just check the archives to see that it's still active. Most of us
are not on the community forums and/or couldn't be bothered to use them.
You can go and see now that "Development" on the community forums is
basically dead, because nobody wants to use it, so trying to push that
on everyone is a terrible idea.

The "Development" category was done on a whim and hasn't really been advertised or mentioned a huge amount. I presented it merely as an option, as it was present.


Even for users, I think the loss of asterisk-users will be a major loss.
Far more *discussion* is happening on the Discourse forum, but far more
*quality* discussion still happens on asterisk-users. Being on a mailing
list seems to be a natural weedout for junk questions. More serious
questions still seem to come through on the mailing list. The community
forums is far fuller of useless postings from people who can't tell a
hard drive from a memory stick. Nobody wants to wade through a bunch of
low-quality posts to find the few that might have some use. Thus,
getting rid of asterisk-users would see a significant drop in the
average quality of user engagement. But at least, even if the -users
list is dropped, the -dev list should stick around in some form.

To be quite blunt, the quality is better on asterisk-users because few actually use it. In the earlier days the quality wasn't as good when it was actually used more. Even then, the quality still varies on the asterisk-users list.


I know the forums can have emails enabled that you can receive, and no,
that's not a proper replacement for a mailing list.

GitHub Discussions aren't a proper mailing list, either, so ultimately I
think that will run into the same issue. GitHub has a lot of bells and
whistles but most of them aren't as built out as using the proper tool
they try to emulate.

I think #3 is the right choice. It's using the right tool for the right
job. If you don't want to maintain the lists, have somebody else do it.
I do a combination of hosted and self-hosted for my own lists. Contrary
to the opinions of some, people, especially technical people, have not
"moved on" from mailing lists; they are widely used, and I get hundreds
of emails a day from them that I have a good workflow for.

Most lists I'm on that used to be elsewhere (e.g. Yahoo Groups, Google
Groups, mailman, LISTSERV, other custom or independent platforms) have
now migrated to groups.io<https://link.edgepilot.com/s/622a4925/CQLh8Pvm80GUSnor4T2lzQ?u=http://groups.io/> and are generally highly satisfied with it
compared to other platforms. It used to be completely free; it's now
free for lists under 100 members, or ones that are grandfathered in. As
the maintainer of several lists there and a member of many more, I've
been pretty happy with it.

I'd suggest creating a list there and letting people on this list
manually opt into it, since there are probably a lot of people on
mailman that aren't active anymore. If it's under 100 members, it's
completely free anyways. If more than 100 people join, that means people
here *really* like mailing lists and find value in them, and I'm sure
Sangoma can afford $20 a month for it, if it really doesn't want to run
mailman lists anymore that badly, and $20 is a small price to keep
developers happy.

Your opinion has been noted.

--
Joshua C. Colp
Asterisk Project Lead
Sangoma Technologies
Check us out at https://link.edgepilot.com/s/1bcb522c/0XLwQyf7QE6vbZFOkxlodA?u=http://www.sangoma.com/ and https://link.edgepilot.com/s/9ea5ac89/mzGwUzF2PkiBwMdnYDrV4g?u=http://www.asterisk.org/


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