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

[Ramanan Selvaratnam]

On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 12:27, Alex Hudson wrote:

> > Interestingly there are other attempts to get OOo to integrate tightly
> > <http://www.gnome.org/~michael/XimianOOo/img0.html>
> 
> OOo presents a set of its own problems; JCA not withstanding. 

Dont know what JCA is but would like to know...
This is the kind of thing that another dedicated list could be useful
for.
As another example, I recently remember finding a small exchange on GTK
on this list useful for osmething otherwise totally unrelated. 

> > We are sort of thinking about localising GNUCash. Aren't we?
> 
> We were vaguely thinking about tax handling for businesses, yes. I think
> that is probably a proposal that would be subsumed into whatever grant
> thing we end up doing: it's definitely worth doing, just needs someone

May be this might get done (maybe partly) without any grant too. 
Another case for a GNOME-UK list 

> to take 'ownership' somehow (I noted on UCOL the other day someone had
> done some interesting work on payroll; any experiences please share ;)
> 
> > what we would need first is a bit more interest from affs memebers
> > interested in this kind of thing excluding mjr and myself.
> > 
> > I know  only one UK based central figure in GNOME development who seems
> > enthusiastic about getting a mailing list going except the admin
> > responsibilities. 
> 
> Well, I personally don't think AFFS should be stepping quickly down the
> road of offering project hosting: I think there are people better

No you understood this wrong.
The discussion on GNOME-UK  was all about the feasibility of a mailing
list to get it started off.

> equipped to do it than us, for a start. A number of ISPs offer PHP/MySQL
> hosting to free software projects - it's about core skills, and AFFS
> isn't really going to be able to provide hosting on a small scale,
> that's not what we do. (I think this is a separate question from that of
> specialisation, though, where it might be that AFFS is able to usefully
> contribute something if the need were very particular?).

I see what you mean here and agree with you.

As a separate point of hosting free software projects ... don't we
already have some infrastructure in UKFSN to a good extent (no shell
account facility but with PHP, Perl, MySQL, PhpMyadmin etc) ?
How this will be branded might be an issue but with all profits pledged
for the development of FS why not be active about this too?

Mailing lists are seperate though.
When you run one instance extending another list is not a big deal and
additional issue. This very list exists through such an arrangement.

> Co-ordination, though, is almost the name of the game. One of the
> reasons I'm against having too many AFFS lists (although I do like the
> idea of an annoucement list, possibly the members list too [since we
> kind of have that already]) is that it sucks people away from the main
> areas of congregation at a time when we're trying to bring people
> together. 

If there is ever a GNOME-UK list helped by AFFS would not this serve the
purpose of publicising AFFS more than 'suck people away'?
It might be confusing to have an address address@hidden though
and aliases might haved to be called in.

> I'm mostly against free software orgs in the UK 'competing', and

As far as I am aware there is only one FS org in the UK that is not
committed to an OS or package.
Are there any more and issues?

> especially AFFS attempting to do things which other people already do in
> much better style than we could. However, there is definitely an
> argument for providing the glue/grease. I'm not really up on the UK
> Gnome community, I think the only person I've spoken to in the last 6

Have you seen the Knoppix wielding UK KDE community making thier
appearence at events in recent times?
If a GNOPPIX wielding GNOME community starts off is a good thing IMHO.
Maybe this is too much of a dream but there are other important tasks
that need doing like doc writing and participation in translations.


> 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

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?


> could do to help them. 

We should help GNOME wherever possible as our constitution allows us.
Sometimes writing a mail introducing what could be done together could go a 
long way.

Best regards,

Ramanan