[Blindapple] The future of this Email discussion list

[Jason Custer]

If Patrion has tought us anything, it’s that it's ok to expect users to pay
for the privileges they use. How about setting up a GoFundMe for $500. If
enough of us contribute, we can make the groups.io or the MailMan III thing
happen. Also, I think most of us can afford a couple dollars a month to
keep the lights on. Maybe you could add a donation page to the site, and
have the server append an "if you'd like to donate" message to the bottom
of emails.
I very much appreciate the site and the list, and would be willing to kick
in a few bucks to keep it going.

I have just one request. If you shut down the list and/or the site, please
                      compress all of it and put it in a couple places,
archive.org and somewhere else.

Here's a third idea, use one of your Apple II computers to create a telnet
BBS. BBS software from that time is available, including accessible ones,
there are modern day BBS programs for the 6502 also, though I don't know
which are accessible. You could either put directions on the current site,
or maybe someone has a corner of a server you could put it on.
I don't know if any of these ideas is useful, but if not then I hope they
lead to ideas that are.

Also, thanks for the heads up. Finding out a favorite site/list is no more
would be a surprise I'd rather skip.
On Sun, Jan 12, 2025 at 8:32 PM Jayson Smith via BlindApple <
blindapple at bluegrasspals.com> wrote:

> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> BlindApple mailing list
> BlindApple at bluegrasspals.com
> https://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/blindapple
>
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