> What I talked to Mark about this morning was that I think the nature of how > these projects can be supported is changing. There is a clear multiplicity > of features which are useful, beyond just a mailing list. I've used > Sourceforge, but I find it dated and shaky. Irrational though it may be, I > get a much better feeling about something like Google Code ( > http://code.google.com) + Google Groups. I feel like Google is here to > stay, and actively "gets it" regarding software development AND open source.
I already manage a couple of Google Groups, and can speak to some of their drawbacks. In the beginning I spent a good deal of time de-spamming and de-porning the site, which is no fun. Because Google Groups is so big, it makes a great spam target. The only real solution I found for that was to manually approve every single subscription request. Also not fun. Another Google Group I visit has the "unresponsive maintainer" problem, if you care to visit, you can see the cock sucking photos permanently spammed to the front page of the Google Group now (NSFW): http://groups.google.com/group/clever-cycles-community The maintainer got tired of de-porning the site and seems to be abandoning it. For me, this choice is also a philosophical one. The open source movement is a decentralized network of grassroots volunteers. Small groups of us trust each other and work together on common goals. I would rather trust someone in our group to run a list on open source software (Perl or not) than I would to give up the control to a centralized, transnational corporation. In this regard, I would rather choose staying with the current list setup or Lyle's proposed over moving the list management to Google. That said, I also recognize the pragmatism in Jesse's suggestion. I contiue to manage two Google Groups because they were easy to set up and work well enough. Mark ##### CGI::Application community mailing list ################ ## ## ## To unsubscribe, or change your message delivery options, ## ## visit: http://www.erlbaum.net/mailman/listinfo/cgiapp ## ## ## ## Web archive: http://www.erlbaum.net/pipermail/cgiapp/ ## ## Wiki: http://cgiapp.erlbaum.net/ ## ## ## ################################################################
