Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Project

[VICTOR TARABOLA CORTIANO]

>
> I would like to add that Librelist is a much need alternative to existing
> mailing list solutions. Let's say that a group of people are trying
> to collaborate over a FOSS project. These people usually need a mailing
> list. What options do they have?
>
> There are two sets of options: (1) commercial solutions and (2) self-hosted
> open-source solution.
>

nongnu.org provides mailing lists. I believe gna.org and sf too.

> Commercial mailing list providers, such as Google and Yahoo, have a lot of
> resources in their disposal that could in principle be used for providing a
> great mailing list service. But that's not what happens in practice. To
> paraphrase a comment from Librelist's founder Zed Shaw, Google and Yahoo
> optimize their services to give the best experience for the user; Problem
> is, from their perspective, the "user" is not the person trying to
> communicate on the mailing list, but the advertiser paying Google/Yahoo for
> advertising on the mailing list.

In other words, google groups and yahoo are worthless crap.

> The second approach is to use mailing list software such as mailman or
> piper. This has two problems:
>
> (1) It requires a server for hosting the list, and a system administrator t=
> o
> configure and maintain the mailing list. For some projects this is a big
> barrier, for others it's merely a waste of time and resources.
>

Fair enough for very small projects.

> (2) The popular mailing list programs are not very good. Take mailman for
> example, which is used for this mailing list. It does many things which may
> have been considered acceptable 10 years ago, but not today. The
> subscription process is cumbersome,

$ mail listname-subscribe@host is anything but cumbersome.

> the program sends the user his password in plain text,

Just don't put an important password there. I don't even store my
passwords since I can unsubscribe by mail.

And you don't even need to provide a password.

> and generally its interface looks like a 1995 website.

Mailman does it job well, it's free software and provides easy to
set up archives. What else do you want? Dancing balloney?

>
> I think that the FSF should sponsor this project. I think it wouldn't
> require a big amount of resources, but it will require the persistence and
> reliability over time that FSF can provide.
>

Why don't you mail the guy from Librelist and the FSF to see
what happens?