On Monday 28 November 2005 12:51 pm, Janet M. Swisher wrote:
> There has been some off-list discussion among some of the OOoAuthors
> members about moving this email list to the oooauthors.org server. We
> thought we'd bring this up to the list so you can decide (by the way,
> "we" includes Agnes, Daniel, Jean, Sigrid, and Janet).
>
> TECHNICAL ISSUES
>
> This mailing list is currently hosted by the user-faq project at
> openoffice.org. The server that handles this list has been having
> increasing downtime and slowdowns, both in sending out messages and in
> updating the archives. Our website, www.oooauthors.org, is hosted on a
> completely different server (run by Enthought, Inc., Janet's employer).
> We have the capability of running mailing lists on it, which we have not
> used up to now. The server hosts two other mailing lists of comparable
> size for open source projects, with good performance and plenty of
> available bandwidth headroom. We could also have multiple mailing lists,
> such as language-specific ones in addition to the current general one.
>
> OTHER ISSUES
>
> The OOo Community Council has raised objections to the books developed
> at OOoAuthors being sold, while OOoAuthors uses OOo resources (the
> mailing list). (The books are being sold by a separate organization,
> Friends of OpenDocument, which has committed to using the proceeds as
> decided by the authors of the books.) One outcome of the council
> discussion was the possibility that we could no longer host the mailing
> list at OOo.
>
> PROS
>
> + Better list server performance; prompt communication is crucial for a
> project such as this, whose membership literally spans the globe.
>
> + Consistency between our mailing list address(es) and our website address.
>
> + Less dependence on OpenOffice.org resources means greater freedom for
> this project to do as this community decides.
>
> CONS
>
> - There is hassle involved in migrating the list, especially as it may
> not be possible to do automatically. People may have to explicitly
> subscribe to the new list. As a result, we may lose some list members,
> especially less active ones.
>
> - We may lose some "cachet" by being less closely associated with the
> OOo site.
>
> - This change makes the project more dependent on Enthought. They might
> someday decide to stop hosting OOoAuthors.org, for whatever reason. (We
> don't think this is likely, but it is possible.) If that happened, then
> we'd have to move both the website and the mailing list to a new server,
> though not a new domain. If we don't move the list, then if Enthought
> kicks OOoAuthors out, "only" the website would have to move to another
> server.
>
> PROCESS
>
> We will create a Plone poll on www.oooauthors.org, for a vote of "yes"
> or "no" on moving the mailing list. It will be accessible only to people
> who currently have author access to the website. The poll will be open
> for one week from the day it is announced. If the outcome is in favor,
> the move to the new list will happen as soon as is feasible.
>
> Announcements about the poll and anything else relevent will be made to
> this list.
>
> Please discuss this proposal on the list. However, the poll will be the
> decision mechanism.
>
> Thank you for your input.
The possible hassle of moving the mailing list depends upon whether the
same program will be used for the mailing list. I have used the program used
by OOo a little. If the same program is used, the files containing the
members of the list should be able to be written to the correct directory
without requiring every one re-subscribe.
Personally, I think it is a good idea to move it. The email I send about
the introductory macro chapter took four days to appear on the list.
Dan
