[Blindapple] The future of this Email discussion list

[Jayson Smith]

Hello,

For the past several months, I've been putting off writing this Email, 
but tonight I decided it was finally time.

I run two relatively low-traffic Email discussion lists on this server, 
Blind Apple, for discussion of Apple II computers as used by the blind, 
and DECtalk, for discussion of the DECtalk speech synthesis system, in 
all its various hardware and software forms. If you're receiving this 
message, you're on one or both of these lists.

I've been running these lists for around twenty years now. When I first 
started running mailing lists on my server, it seems the Internet was 
more forgiving in some ways. Running your own Email server was a cool 
thing to do. I was on top of the world, running mailing list management 
software (Mailman) on my own server, so I had complete control over how 
everything was handled, etc. Now, not so much. Running your own Email 
server is definitely not the cool thing to do any more, and Mailman 
version 2, which I'm still using, has been end of life for a few years 
now, as far as its development and maintenance status is concerned. And 
yet, as little traffic as these lists get, it hardly seems worth 
upgrading to Mailman version 3, especially considering that I'd also 
need to find and pay for a reliable outgoing Email server which is okay 
with handling mailing list traffic.

Okay, I know what you're saying. "Just move to Groups.io!" That's 
actually an excellent suggestion, and I have several other lists hosted 
there. The problem is that they want a year's subscription to their 
Premium plan up front in order for me to import all the existing group 
members and message archives. That's $220, so since there are two lists, 
that's $440. I'm not sure I want to put that much money into these lists 
out-of-pocket. Another option would be to create the groups at 
Groups.io, invite all existing members (that's all you can do for free, 
as direct adding requires a subscription), and whoever joins, joins, and 
people can talk. But then, the archives from before the move to 
Groups.io stay at bluegrasspals.com, and it kind of seems clunky to have 
two sets of list archives.

Something will need to definitely happen within a year or two. At some 
point I'll have to upgrade my server to a Linux distribution that 
doesn't have Python 2, and without going through all sorts of hoops to 
install this outdated software, Mailman 2 won't run. So I need to decide 
what to do before that happens.

I'm sorry this Email seems a bit disorganized. If anyone has any 
thoughts, or can think of any other options for keeping these lists 
moving forward, feel free to let me know. I just want to know your 
thoughts as to whether you think I should move the lists to Groups.io 
without archives, shut them down, or something else.

Thanks,

Jayson