On Fri, May 12, 2000 at 11:29:56AM -0700, Dunlap, Randy wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
> has been setup and working for some time now.
>
> I'm wondering if we should begin to use it (soon or not
> at all).
> We would use it for linux-usb development/test and continue
> to use [EMAIL PROTECTED] for user questions/help/issues.
Personally, I think this is a great idea. I'd really like to see these two
subjects separated -- it makes it much easier to discuss hard-core
technical issues when the discussion isn't constantly interrupted by people
who are less familiar with kernel programming. And I say that as a person
who, a year ago, wasn't that familiar with kernel programming.
> This may or may not work out. I say this for at least
> 3 reasons:
Allow me to offer some counter-points to your concerns:
> 1. Many of us may need to remain posted to both of these
> mailing lists, so the only outcomes the split are (a) having
> 2 mail-list addresses to use and (b) being able to split
> them up if desired (or maybe merge them if desired).
This isn't a problem for me (and I suspect for most of us). At last count,
I had 9 separate mailboxes and over 15 e-mail addresses (when you control
your own mailserver, creating an alias is pretty easy). One more wouldn't
hurt at all -- in fact, it would be a welcome sorting. And for those who
want it all delivered to the same inbox -- well, that's easy too. Separate
lists allows, but does not require, more fine-grained sorting.
> 2. It may confuse linux-usb users and cause cross-posting,
> which I would like to avoid.
I'd like to avoid users posting to linux-usb-devel. My preference would be
to make this a list which only subscribed memebers could post. And the
subscription base would be almost entirely (if not exclusively)
developers/maintainers and testers with a clue (i.e. people who know that a
bug should say more than "it doesn't work").
> 3. linux-kernel issues have various other mailing lists, like
> linux-usb, linux-scsi, linux-mm, linux-fsdevel, acpi, etc.
> However, lots of messages are duplicated (cross-posted) on
> these lists, so my personal experience says that the usage of
> the separate lists is not as as good as expected (at least not
> as good as I expected it to be).
Cross posting does occur, but in my experience what often happens is that a
starting post is cross-posted to 2 or 3 lists, and then the discussion
quickly moves to just one -- this seems to happen often with linux-scsi.
Also, as I said before, if we restrict access to linux-usb-devel,
cross-posting won't be as bad.
> Now that I've written this down, I'm leaning towards _not_
> splitting the linux-usb mailing list (and removing the
> linux-usb-devel list at sourceforge.net).
>
> Of course, I say this without having a 2.4 release yet,
> so we haven't really got into a large amount of
> users and user issues/problems. When that happens, I may
> change my mind.
This is exactly what I'm worried about. I get, on average, 5-10 messages
a day (direct to me) from users of usb-storage which need answers like "Use
/dev/scd0 instead of /dev/sda". Imagine the flood that will happen on
linux-usb when 2.4.0 is released. I strongly believe that the developers
need a separate list.
Matt Dharm
--
Matthew Dharm Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Senior Engineer, QCP Inc. Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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