[Blindapple] The future of this Email discussion list

[Darcy Burnard]

Hi.  Personally, I’m not sure I’d worry about the archives for this list.  A lot of the content may be out of date, at least the stuff that pertains to Mess.
Darcy


> On Jan 12, 2025, at 11:32 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
> 
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