[GoLUG] Mailing list, long term.

[Kyle Terrien]

On Thu, Aug 14, 2025 at 05:29:07PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> Barry Fishman said on Thu, 14 Aug 2025 11:40:26 -0500
> 
> >On 2025-08-11 21:10:41 -04, Steve Litt wrote:
> >> Within 2 years I'm going to make a new, better mailing list
> >> technology that does what mailing lists should have done all along.
> >> For the rest of this document I'll call the new non-email mailing
> >> list software "MindMeld", the working title, and the general concept
> >> of remote group collaboration as "mind meld".  
> 
> >But there still is NNTP.  Shares an article format with e-mail, and has
> >common threading and supports gateways with e-mail.  It can support
> >multiple servers, and login.  It can also do moderated groups, so that
> >articles can be subject to validation by trusted parties if spam
> >becomes a problem.  It can be read by many e-mail clients like Claws,
> >GNOME Evolution, Thunderbird, and Emacs GNUS.  I know that GNUS, which
> >I use lets me copy news articles and threads I want to keep into my own
> >folders.
> 
> All email clients suck. Claws-mail, Evolution and Mutt suck the least,
> but they all suck. Now's my chance not to saddle the user with an email
> client.
> 
> Also, NNTP has fallen out of use, meaning that I'd get less help with a
> NNTP based MindMeld.

I haven’t used NNTP since Mozilla mirrored their mailing lists on it.
It worked okay, except whenever I posted a message, there were always
some spambots ready to scrape my email to sell me enhancements.
kc-golug said that spam problems are not the case anymore (after
Google Groups gave up on NNTP), so that’s a good improvement.

Absolutely correct that NNTP will require you to pull in many email
RFCs, for better or worse.

> >My biggest problems with
> >some large projects like Gnome, is they spend so much effort on meeting
> >the perceived needs of users that they don't have, they seem to forget
> >the needs of users they already have.
> 
> Slight paraphrase:
> 
> >"Some large projects, like Gnome, spend so much effort on meeting the
> >perceived needs of users that they don't have, that they seem to forget
> >the needs of users they already have.

I have thought about this a lot.  I said the same thing about Mozilla
10 years ago, and I must have been correct.  It was their downfall.

> I've never heard it stated so accurately and succinctly. And I'll add a
> second sentence:
> 
> "With these feature churning projects, follow the money, and you'll
> usually be led to a monopolist or oligopolist."

Ah... that’s when conspiracy theories turn into conspiracy facts.

Consider Mozilla.  Now, Mozilla is very worried about how they will
receive funding after the Google antitrust suit takes away their
$500M/yr source of revenue.

-- 
[*] Kyle Terrien
    Terrenus => from the Earth, to the Cloud
    https://terren.us/

Dilexisti justitiam, et odisti iniquitatem.  -- Psalmus 44:8