[asterisk-dev] Mailing List Future

[Michael Maier]

Hello!

I can fully agree with what you have written. 100%

Thanks
Michael


On 04.12.23 at 13:52 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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 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.
> 
> NA
> 
> On 12/4/2023 7:28 AM, Jaco Kroon wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> My 5c.  Killing the dev list is a bad idea.
>>
>> Most developers could not care about having to poll forums.  It also means that 
>> stuff that would previously get an audience will now get none.
>>
>> github discussions are better than forums at least.
>>
>> May I inquire as to the problem you're having with the ML? Perhaps I might be 
>> able to assist ...
>>
>> Kind regards,
>> Jaco
>>
>> On 2023/12/04 14:00, Joshua C. Colp wrote:
>>
>>> Greetings all,
>>>
>>> Over the past few years, the use of the Asterisk mailing lists has diminished, 
>>> with far more conversation happening on the Asterisk community forums[1]. The 
>>> state of email, to ensure reliable delivery, has also gotten more complicated - 
>>> emails get caught by spam filters, etc.. To continue the mailing lists would 
>>> require a huge time and resource investment, for minimal use.
>>>
>>> To that end, we’ve decided to discontinue the mailing lists effective February 
>>> 1st, 2024.
>>>
>>> This means the following:
>>>
>>> 1. Sending and receiving mailing list emails will no longer be possible.
>>> 2. The list archives, however, will remain available.
>>>
>>> We need to decide the future of the asterisk-dev mailing list; specifically, 
>>> where to hold discussions in the future. There are a few options:
>>>
>>> 1. A “Development” category exists on https://community.asterisk.org/ already 
>>> that can be used.
>>> 2. We can use GitHub discussions, which keeps things with the GitHub project.
>>> 3. We can use a hosted mailing list elsewhere.
>>>
>>> We suggest option #2, since it keeps things with the GitHub project, which is 
>>> where everything development-related happens now regardless. This has been set 
>>> up and enabled already.
>>>
>>> If you have any input, now is the time to state it.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Joshua C. Colp
>>> Asterisk Project Lead
>>> Sangoma Technologies
>>> Check us out at www.sangoma.com <http://www.sangoma.com> and www.asterisk.org 
>>> <http://www.asterisk.org>
>>>
>>
>>
> 
>