OpenSSL project is considering to close this mailing list

[Jonathan Day]

Please do not close this list. The problems I, and other relatively new
OpenSSL users, face are not really suited to Github's facilities. They're
best solved on mailing lists. (And a big thanks to those who did help me
with my issues.)

>From my standpoint, it's relatively simple where to go for specific
questions. OpenSSL codebase developer/development questions go to the
development list, user/usage questions go to the user list. I would not
score myself highly on the IQ stakes, but even I had little difficulty with
that one. Yes, you're going to get people posting incorrectly, but you'll
get that happening in any system.

(People posted to incorrect newsgroups on USENET, and that's despite
lengthy spelled-out names and repeated FAQ postings.)

In my recent situation, I was trying to both compile my own binaries (which
is a user issue, so questions belong on a user mailing list but NOT on a
request forum) and use pre-existing binaries (which raised issues that
clearly belonged on the mailing list of the binary provider). There was a
TINY bit of overlap, which meant that there was some similarity in the
questions I asked both places. But it was clear to me which place would
best answer which part of which question. And, again, I'm no genius.

Some cross-posting of the above sort is inevitable, but there should never
be cross-posting between the developer's mailing list and the user's
mailing list - save perhaps for possibly some announcements. I can't think
of a single occasion when a user should be confused as to whether to post
to a codebase development mailing list or a user's mailing list. In any
given instant, you're either writing the software or you're using it.

User education issues won't vanish by using GitHub's forums. Because so few
people use them, and because they're actually not very good, user education
problems might actually get worse. Especially as it doesn't sound like
there will be any clear space for user-specific (as opposed to codebase
development-specific) issues.
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