[asterisk-dev] Mailing List Future

[asterisk at phreaknet.org]

On 12/13/2023 7:55 AM, Joshua C. Colp wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 8:45 AM Jonathan Simpson 
> <jsimpson at jdsnetwork.com <mailto:jsimpson at jdsnetwork.com>> wrote:
>
>     The mixed content is useful.
>
>     Learning about stir shaken updates, useful. Would that have been
>     in a github notification? Would the subject line be parsable?
>
>
> My inquiry was strictly regarding release notifications and security 
> advisories. If discussions were done in GitHub then it would have been 
> a GitHub notification and parseable if you opted to receive them.

I'll point out another issue with this as well. This assumes we're just 
talking about the "asterisk" repo here, and friends, but the 
asterisk-dev list has become the catch-all list for most discussion of 
anything development related in the entire Asterisk family of software, 
particularly as most of the other lists died a long time ago.

For example, in what repo should discussion of wanpipe take place? Some 
of us might want to discuss issues with or trade patches[1], but there 
isn't a wanpipe repo since it's not an "open source project". Or general 
discussions that might cross over into multiple repos at once, like 
something that affects both Asterisk and DAHDI Linux, or both DAHDI 
Linux and DAHDI Tools? Should everyone now watch the asterisk-test-suite 
repo too? There are a lot of edge cases this doesn't handle well.

I think it's also worth pointing out that, while I'm not one of these 
individuals, there are a number of people that don't have a GitHub 
account (and perhaps might not want one) that would be excluded if all 
discussion was happening there. This very point came out when the 
project moved away from Atlassian and there were comments to that effect 
*on this list*. These people would have been completely unheard if 
discussion had also moved to GitHub prior to that. Do you want to 
intentionally exclude them now?

Some people I've noticed also subscribe to the digest version of this 
list. I could be wrong but I doubt GitHub discussion has a "digest" 
mechanism... because it isn't a real mailing list with all the options 
of a real mailing list.

Sometimes people see something on the mailing list and reply privately 
to the OP to continue a specific point of discussion off-list. On GitHub 
discussions, where everyone is identified by their GitHub usernames and 
not real names or email addresses, getting in touch with someone could 
be considerably more difficult, particularly for people who might just 
be looking at the discussion online.

And frankly, I think expecting 2100 people to reply to this thread is 
downright unrealistic. On no mailing list ever does everybody 
participate. The majority of mailing lists are dominated by the 
discussion of a few while the rest sit back and listen (which is 
perfectly fine), maybe 5% of posters generating 95% of the posts. Some 
people don't want to contribute, but they do want to read. Nobody has 
come out and said he or she wants the mailing list to go away or give 
way to another format, and lack of a response is *not* tacit approval of 
doing so. All the stakeholders that have spoken out are against the 
decision.

I will say though that I have been receiving release announcements both 
via the mailing list and via GitHub. For release announcements 
specifically, they both work fine. In fact, since the recent 3.3.0 GA 
DAHDI Linux release only went to GitHub and not the mailing lists, 
that's how I noticed it. I think GitHub is probably just fine for this, 
but less so for everything else.

I've already given my opinion before, but I'll reiterate that mailing 
lists are accessible to everyone in a way that GitHub never has been and 
never will be. I can fire up a terminal email client like mutt or alpine 
and make a new post to the list[2][3]. Their website is notorious for 
making random changes that break certain browsers and they don't give a 
hoot. It's a proprietary platform that we're all at the complete mercy 
of. There are already certain things that it's bad at, and there's no 
reason to expect it will be better at other things in the future.

NA

[1] This has been happening, but largely on another private mailing 
list, not on the asterisk-dev list, though the latter is arguably a more 
suitable location for this
[2] And given the audience of this list, I think it's reasonable to 
expect that a number of subscribers do this or may want to, at least 
occasionally
[3] I'm aware you can respond to a GitHub discussion from email, but you 
can't start a discussion via email - see 
https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/76055/can-i-create-an-issue-in-a-github-repository-by-sending-an-email
This alone is a major access barrier, considering that GitHub no longer 
works in any of my preferred browsers, because they have no obligation 
to comply with standards. Even though I have a GitHub account, I hate 
using the GitHub website and it's a pain to do so.