[chef] Re: [chef-dev] Proposal: Moving from lis ts.opscode.com to googlegroups… any concerns/objection s?

[Brad Knowles < >]

On Jun 14, 2012, at 2:34 PM, Jesse Robbins wrote:

> Rationale:
> The reason for this is that I'd rather Opscode put resources into new 
> community.opscode.com features & fixes than maintain and enhance the 
> listserv.  We don't currently have so many lists or special security 
> requirements that justify our own listserv infrastructure.  We would all 
> benefit from better search, easier interfaces, and lower friction.

Speaking only for myself, I've been involved in Mailman mailing list 
administration for a number of years, and I also have experience with other 
tools like Majordomo and Sympa, as well as being on a couple of Google Groups 
lists.

Frankly, of these four programs, Google Groups does not compare well.  Modern 
versions of Majordomo have greatly improved since the one I worked with, but 
I made the switch to Mailman a long time ago, and have never looked back.

From what I've seen, Sympa is somewhat better than Mailman 2.1.x in some ways 
but Mailman 2.1.x is somewhat better than Sympa in others, and overall it 
seems to be a wash.  Sympa does seem to be more targeted towards the 
International and educational communities, whereas Mailman is more targeted 
towards the Linux/Open Source communities.  As a business, you'd want to 
figure out what parts of those descriptions fit you better.

Of course, work on Mailman 3 is well underway, and work on the mail archive 
handling tools is planned for Google Summer of Code 2012, among many other 
things.  There are some people who are already using the early access alpha 
and the first beta (see 
<http://www.mail-archive.com/
 /msg12551.html>)
 and doing productive work in hosting their lists.

I've supported Mailman-hosted mailing lists for a variety of open source 
projects, and this is definitely something that can be done on a volunteer 
basis.  For small sites (such as yours), I would honestly expect no more than 
an hour or two per week that would need to be spent in managing the mailing 
list system.

> History:
> When I originally insisted (in 2008) we host our own listservs, it is 
> because I felt that we would have a proliferation of private lists which 
> would require special authentication... and I didn't want to rely on 
> google.  Almost everyone I have ever talked to about this has told me that 
> was dumb and stifling community growth.

Stifling community growth?  A goal of reducing friction?  I'm at a loss to 
understand how these issues would be resolved by switching to Google Groups.  
You'd still have to have people designated to monitor the mailing list system 
and to be the POCs to contact Google when there are problems, but then it 
would be entirely out of your hands as to when (or if) the problems ever 
actually get resolved.

We know that offshoring doesn't really work, not when you compare total 
lifecycle costs.  Same for many types of outsourcing.  I would honestly like 
to see some TCO and ROI numbers that would prove that switching to Google 
Groups would actually do anything beneficial for you.

--
Brad Knowles 
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LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>