There is a new discourse blog post <http://blog.discourse.org/2016/03/free-discourse-forum-hosting-for-community-friendly-github-projects/> were Discourse offers free hosting for 'community friendly Github projects'. I think Julia would qualify and this would solve the question about self-hosting and its associated work.
On the other hand I don't recall what is the current situation about some people strongly preferring traditional maillists and Discourse' support thereof.
