cool-RR wrote:
Hello Samuel,
I'm glad I got the right list.
According to your definition, the project fits Wikimedia's goal. I will now
introduce it.
The project is called Librelist. The official website introduces it quite
well, so I'll just quote it:
Librelist is a free as in freedom mailing list site
for open source
projects. It is a place for FOSS communities to discuss all the things they
want without ads, censorship, signup requirements, bundled apps, or
requirements that you use any particular email client or service.
Anyone Can Make A List
You can make a mailing list by simply sending an email to list(a)librelist.com,
and if it doesn’t exist, it will make it for you and subscribe you. That’s
all there is to it, and no restrictions on making the lists.
Some steps shuld be a little harder. How do you difference a typo from a
request for a new list? Who is set as admin? Etc.
Anyone Can Subscribe To A List
You also subscribe to a list by simply sending your first message to
list(a)librelist.com. That’s it. It ditches your original message and sends
you a confirmation you reply to. No signup or web forms involved.
From
http://librelist.com/help.html it looks like you
don't need to
answer a payload to be subscribed. That will produce lots of
problems
when its mailing lists gets sent spam messages with faked from headers.
It could even be abused as a remailer.
I'm pretty sure it is mentioned in some RFC, but it's proper netiquette
anyway.
And I would say, that the biggest disadvantage
Librelist currently has is
this: Since it is a relatively new community project, it's hard to trust
that it will stay operating and well-maintained for years. People don't want
to start a mailing list on a service that might get closed 6 months from
now. The founder of Librelist seems enthusiastic enough, but this is a
non-profit project for him, so it's impossible to be certain that he will
not become too busy for the project in the future.
That can be solved to some extent by making it easy to fork. I see that
the mailing lists are rsyncable which is very nice.
If the mailing list admin can download with a click a mailing list
backup that can be installed on a server with a couple of clicks should
librelist go down. (Note that these contain email addresses so they must
not be public)
I think that the Wikimedia foundation should sponsor
this project. I think
it wouldn't require a big amount of resources, but it will require the
persistence and reliability over time that Wikimedia has shown with
Wikipedia and its other projects.
I don't think that fits cleanly into the Mission, but the decision is up
to the board.