[illumos-Discuss] Proposed migration off Mailman

[Andre van Eyssen]

On Sun, 17 Jul 2011, Nikola M. wrote:

> What is actually wrong with mailman?
> Why should one want to move self-hosted in-house service backed by open
> source software it can control and enhance , to some company-owned
> closed proprietary SERVICE that is off-site and uncontrolled?

Because mailman isn't great and causes problems that are hard to diagnose, 
harder to fix and cause a great deal of complaints from users. These 
aren't specific to our lists and are common complaints from mailman sites.

The entire infra team reviewed the listbox.com option and are satisfied 
with their service, including the ability to pull data back out if we 
should ever need to self-host again.

> If we know exactly what is wrong with mailman and why mailing lists
> hosting should not stay in-house and inside project-controlled space,
> maybe that way mailman could be changed to work better.

Quite apart from the core software complaints about mailman, administering 
mail infrastructure takes time. Every day, thousands of messages of spam 
gets pumped into our lists and action is required to clear this out. 
Running quality production mail infrastructure consumes time, resources 
and isn't free. The administration team would prefer to dedicate their 
time to improving core services for getting the job done, not re-inventing 
the wheel just to handle list services.

Running project infrastructure is a thankless job. An extremely thankless 
job. It consumes a lot of time and when things are done properly, the 
result is often invisible to the users.

We all have jobs and lives. I don't want to spend 10 hours a week cleaning 
up muck from mailservers that are only being used to run lists.

> It is not only question in mailman versus some other app. (what other
> app is alternative for in-house mailing lists that you have in mind?)
> It is question of willingness to put main channel of the project
> communication in the hands of some greedy closed company that they could
> close it any day they like.
> Not for and not against.

And *this* is why open source advocacy either sends people to sleep or 
makes them angry so often. Your mail reads like a slashdot comment 
screaming for open source with no good reason, no justification and no 
desire to fund the time required to do it. Labelling a company as "greedy" 
when they're actually a major force for good in the email world, not to 
mention the perl community makes you look like an idiot and absolutely 
erodes any desire to consider your viewpoint.

As it stands, if you'd like to make some substantial donations to Illumos 
to cover the time it takes to ensure everything stays open-source, feel 
free to pay up. If not, we're going to move the lists to a service that 
costs us nothing and handles this workload as a core business.

> Yust explain your motives not to be self-hosted.

Infrastructure is about delivering services, not politics.

Frankly, as far as I'm concerned this issue is closed. I'm not going to 
discuss it any further on-list. If you feel the decision is improper, 
please discuss it directly with the other members of the administrative 
council.


-- 
Andre van Eyssen.
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