Re: [Fsfe-uk] [Proposal] Mailing lists

[Telsa Gwynne]

Introductions: 

board-list, meet AFFS: AFFS is the association for free software in the UK.
affs, meet board-list: board-list is the Gnome foundation board address.

Note that I think the board-list address is one where stuff gets held 
for approval, and I know it's a private one. So drop the board-list 
from any replies. This is just cc'd so they know what I'm up to (and 
send lots of luvverly help, Tim!)

On Wed, Oct 22, 2003 at 03:08:24PM +0100 or thereabouts, Ramanan Selvaratnam 
wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 12:27, Alex Hudson wrote:

> > Gnome community, I think the only person I've spoken to in the last 6
> > months was Telsa on irc the other day. So, I don't really have an idea
> > of what these people are doing or whether or not there are things AFFS
> > could do to help them.
> 
> Yes I too exchanged mails with Telsa recently and what I understood was
> there is a crowd  and willingness but nothing is being done due to the
> possible administrative overheads. 
> 
> This is about a mailing list and if AFFS is starting to run Mailman, I
> do not see why we should not explore this?

Since I have just unset myself from "no-mail" on mailman here, I
have just spotted this thread.

It's not "administrative overheads" related to running a mailing
list that is the problem. There are at least three sites I could
set such a list up on. In fact, I'm doing it now. 

The situation is that there are quite a few Gnome people in the 
UK, but we are lamentably bad at getting ourselves to shows. We
never have time, transport, people, machines, goodies, and a plan 
all at the same time. London is a long way for people and expensive 
to reach.

It's a problem common to many groups, but other groups seem to 
overcome it. We find ourselves casting about at a week's notice 
saying "eep, there's a show, I can't make it, who can I think of 
on IRC or whose mail I have who might be able to?" And then not 
going, or sharing the Debian stand yet again, because Debian are 
friendly like that (also, they have beer). We've also shared the 
KDE stand at least once.

I think, frankly, most of us want someone else to do the organising
of this logistical stuff, or at least to fund it. I am certainly
hopeless at organising. I can't think of more than two Gnome people 
I know who have a car, even. I have had my share of carrying computers 
and monitors around on trains, and I really don't want to do that 
any more. What we need is to find out how to get machines to shows 
cheaply, whether local companies will do it (especially if we can 
scrounge boxes and delivery of them), and so on. For example, at 
LinuxTag a few years ago, the Gnome stand computers almost all came 
from the RH Germany office, because several employees there were 
going to attend on the RH stand anyway. So we borrowed a box or 
two from their office, and someone turned up with a car and we 
loaded them all up.

If we could do that sort of thing, rather than three of us
arriving with our laptops or smallest computers on the train,
that would help so much.

So the mailing list is no problem. As I said, I am setting one
up now. Gnome's problem in the UK is just getting to the shows
with people and equipment. Whether setting up a mailing list 
will solve that, I don't know. We shall see.

Telsa